- Add Vib To Esxi Iso
- Esxi Install Driver From Iso
- Esxi Install Driver From Usb
- Install Drivers Vmware Esxi
I recently had to install VMware ESXi 6.0 on a server sporting an Areca RAID controller. Since Areca supplies VMware drivers on their site, and this is a well-established name-brand controller, you may expect it to be easy to get it working. It isn’t exactly easy, since VMware doesn’t natively support this controller, but I did get it working, and since this same basic procedure could be adopted for other models/brands/situations, I wanted to post how I did it, since I couldn’t find anyone else on the internet at the time who had useful instructions for someone who hadn’t done it before (or with this version of VMware).
Standard VMware ESXi ISO, is the easiest and most reliable way to install ESXi on HPE servers. It includes all of the required drivers and management software to run ESXi on HPE servers, and works seamlessly with Intelligent Provisioning. Certain HPE servers require the use of the HPE Customized image for a successful installation.
Ok, first of all, we may be more than 15 years into the 21st century, but you wouldn’t know it when you’re trying to install a driver in VMware’s latest 6.0 version of ESXi, which hasn’t even been out that long. For some reason, if you have a 3rd party driver to install that doesn’t come natively in VMware, it all needs to be done using arcane command line syntax with multiple 3rd party programs. Why they don’t just have a place in the GUI to click on that allows you to easily install drivers in VMware, I don’t know. To make matters worse, you can’t even get to the GUI if you haven’t installed VMware yet, so that’s the first problem you’ll run into if you try to install it onto drives attached to your new RAID controller. (This particular model was the Areca ARC-1214-4i.) Sure, you can download drivers from Areca’s web site, but it doesn’t do you much good when the VMware installation screens never once offer you a chance to install a 3rd party driver (like Microsoft has done since the NT4 days when you could always hit F6 during installation, and then give it a floppy disk, etc.).
- Indeed, the ESXi image doesn’t support most of LAN NIC adapters. To install ESXi on such a computer, you will have to inject the drivers for your network adapter into your ESXi installation image. Let’s see how to add a driver to the VMware ESXi 6.7 installation ISO.
- ESXI how to install the network card driver Jump to solution. Hi all: My ESXI5.5 has been installed, but found that the network adapter can not be identified, how to install the network card driver. All forum topics; Previous Topic; Next Topic; 1 Solution.
No, instead, the way they recommend you do it (assuming you’re only running a few physical VMware servers) is to install it to a USB flash drive, and THEN once its installed, you can install the RAID controller drivers. (And I do mean USB flash drive – I tried installing it to an external USB HDD first, and it wouldn’t see it. When I plugged in a little 2GB USB key though, it came right up!) So yes, you’ll install VMware to a USB flash drive, and THAT will be your boot drive forevermore, so make sure it’s a drive you don’t want back ever again! ;)
Ok, so now you’ve installed VMware to your USB key and booted it up, and it’s working fine, but when you connect from the vSphere Client, it tells you there are no datastores defined, and it asks if you’d like to add one. But, when you try to go ahead and create a datastore as it suggests, it gives you NO WAY to add a new controller/drivers to create the datastore on!
So here’s what you do:
First, go to the server’s physical console/monitor, and go into Troubleshooting, and enable ESXi Shell and SSH.
Then, back at a workstation, download your driver file and look inside to find the *.VIB file that is for your make/model card.
Use the freeware WinSCP program to copy the VIB file to the VMware server in /tmp/.
Now use the freeware PuTTY to bring up a terminal window giving you basic command line access to your server. (Don’t be alarmed if it moves slowly logging you in.) At the PuTTY prompt, run this command:
For a file that’s only 30kb it takes a long time to complete doing whatever it’s doing behind the scenes after you enter that command. I didn’t time it, but it seemed like I waited a good minute or more before I finally got some kind of response from the server. If it worked, it will give you a message that it was successful, and will probably have a line saying something like “reboot needed: true” which of course means you need to reboot the server.
At this point you can close PuTTY and WinSCP, and reboot the server (I do it from the physical server’s console/monitor). After its rebooted (and assuming you’ve already correctly set up a drive/volume in a RAID array on the controller), then you should now be able to create a datastore and can move forward using VMware as usual.
Whew! What a pain! VMware obviously knows that major manufacturers make cards that people use with their stuff, so I don’t know why it’s so difficult to install a 3rd party driver. Areca doesn’t help the situation, by giving a vague indication in their nearly useless README.TXT included with the driver download that basically just tells you to manually install the VIB file. Couldn’t THEY at least point you in the right direction?!? Anyway, hopefully you found this blog post before spending too many hours banging your head against a wall trying to put all of the pieces of this puzzle together yourself…
–Steve
Last week I have been struggling with the installation of a vSphere 4 infrastructure on Dell hardware at a Belgium client site.
I have done many many many VMware installations and encountered my fair share of issues but apart from the HP USB sticks the hardware never gave me this much trouble.
It all started with a very difficult BIOS/firmware upgrade which, after various downloads and trials, ended with an old-school DOS boot USB and a DOS based BIOS update. Real 1980’s stuff.
With this fixed I installed all ESX hosts and left for the hotel, ready to start the configuration the next day. However, when I started with the first ESX host and wanted to configure the network, I noticed that I only had eight NICs when I should have had twelve. We use Dell PowerEdge R805 servers with two Intel quad port 82576 Gigabit Ethernet Adapters, the first card was already in the server, the second card we added just before the installation.
At first I suspected the expansion slot and riser board and tried swapping PCI-e x8 and PCI-e x4 slots but with no success. But by swapping the NICs we noticed that the original NIC worked but the NIC we added just before the installation did not. Further investigation showed that although the NICs were identical with regards to type, chipset, layout, etc, the revisions where a little different.
Searching the VMware Support website we found a driver CD for the Intel 82575 and 82576 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter.
Although we designed the virtual infrastructure with ESXi hosts in mind we used standard ESX 4 to check if the driver CD would fix the issue and have the additional four NICs pop up. And they did, YES!
Add Vib To Esxi Iso
But next up, our next and hopefully final challenge.
With standard ESX it is very easy to add additional drivers during installation. Just select ‘Yes’ when the installations asks if you want to add additional drivers, select and add the driver and you’re done.
With ESXi you have only two options when installing, 1. Install ESXi, 2. Boot from harddisk. That’s all, so how do you add additional drivers?
The driver CD manual combined with a little help from a colleague (thanks AJ) did the trick. After the installation configure the management network on one of the functioning NICs, connect using the vSphere client and put the host in maintenance mode. After that use the vSphere CLI to install the additional driver from the driver CD (inserted in the client containing the vSphere CLI) using the following command:
Esxi Install Driver From Iso
‘vihostupdate.pl –server [IP address] –username root –install –bundle [CD/DVD]:offline-bundleINT-intel-lad-ddk-igb-1.3.19.12.1-offline_bundle-185976.zip‘
Reboot the ESX host and enjoy the four extra NICs!
For easy reference follows a step by step How To:
Step 1) Download the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface from the VMware website.
Step 2) Install the VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface.
Step 3) Connect to the ESXi server through the VI client you wish to inject the NIC drivers into.
Step 4) Put the ESXi host in maintenance mode. This can be done by connecting through the VI client with the ESXi server.
Step 5) Inject the NIC drivers using the CLI
C:Program Files (x86)VMwareVMware vSphere CLIbin>vihostupdate.pl –server 172.17.101.13 –username root –install –bundle D:offline-bundleINT-intel-lad-ddk-igb-1.3.19.12.1-offline_bundle-185976.zip
You will see in the VI Client that the driver is installed.
Step 6) Reboot the host.
Step 7) Check the total number of network adapters through the VI client.
Under Configuration Tab> Network Adapters under hardware column.
Esxi Install Driver From Usb
Step 8 Install finished successful.
Install Drivers Vmware Esxi
Related Posts: