Its quite easy to boot esx from a usb device or flash card..
First download the .iso, then browse with winrar or similar. See if you can find the “big”.dd file this is the file we need.
i.e. the ESXi 4 file is called VMware-VMvisor-big-208167-x86_64.dd
Next grab WinImage and “restore image to physical harddrive” choose the .dd file the select your usb / flash drive.
Done.
First format your usb / flash drive with FAT. Then copy all the contents of the installer .iso onto the drive.
Next delete isolinux.bin and rename isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg
Edit syslinux.cfg and append “usb” to the line starting with “append” … i.e. similar to this
append vmkboot.gz — vmkernel.gz — sys.vgz — cim.vgz — ienviron.tgz — image.tgz — install.tgz usb
Next grab the latest syslinux.exe (zip for windows) from here and run syslinux -s –ma
Time to schedule some tasks!
First you need to make sure your in the /etc/cron.d/cron.allow file. If you are not SU to root and add yourself into it.
Now to create your new crontab file;
crontab -e
You are in vi in your newly created crontab file (note if you do not have access to do this it will say so)
Now, i’m no expert at using vi, but if you press i you will go into insert mode. Do this, then type the cron job details. A typical cron job will look like this