How to update the ESXi USB Stick System Image

1 How to update the ESXi System Image

Shutdown the VMWare ESXi server. Remove the USB Memory stick and plug it into a linux computer. run the dmesg command to find out the device the memory stick is assigned to. The following example assumes that it is /dev/sdf. Replace is by the correct device.

mkdir -p /mnt/esxi
mount -t vfat /dev/sdf5 /mnt/esxi

Save local.tgz and the bexi/ directory to the local machine

cp -a /mnt/esxi/local.tgz /mnt/esxi/bexi .
umount /mnt/esxi

1.1 Extract Image

Download the ISO from the VMWare website and extract the image.

1.1.1 ESXi 3.5 instructions

mount -o loop VMware-VMvisor-InstallerCD*iso /mnt/esxi/
mkdir -p /tmp/esxi
tar -xvzf /mnt/esxi/install.tgz -C /tmp/esxi/
umount /mnt/esxi
cd /tmp/esxi/usr/lib/vmware/installer/
bzip2 -d VMware-VMvisor-big*.dd.bz2
mv VMware-VMvisor*.dd  VMware-VMvisor.dd

1.1.2 ESXi 4.0 instructions

mount -o loop VMware-VMvisor-InstallerCD*iso /mnt/esxi/
mkdir -p /tmp/esxi
tar -xvzf /mnt/esxi/image.tgz -C /tmp/esxi/
umount /mnt/esxi
cd /tmp/esxi/usr/lib/vmware/installer/
bzip2 -d VMware-VMvisor-big*.dd.bz2
mv VMware-VMvisor*.dd  VMware-VMvisor.dd

1.2 Write Image

Write the new image to the memory stick. Make sure that you use the correct target device of=...

dd if=VMware-VMvisor.dd of=/dev/sdf
cd /
rm -rf /tmp/esxi

1.3 Restore Settings

Copy local.tgz and the bexi/ directory to the memory stick.

mount -t vfat /dev/sdf5 /mnt/esxi
cp -a local.tgz bexi /mnt/esxi
umount /mnt/esxi

Plug the memory stick into the ESXi server and power on.

Note: Alternatively you can install the new ESXi image on a second memory stick and then remote copy local.tgz and bexi/ from the running ESXi. Then shut down the ESXi server, replace the stick and power on. This minimizes the down time.

2 References

• Wiki article Backup of ESXi Virtual Machines using Affa