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Deploying ESXi to a local hard drive

Use these procedures to deploy VMware ESXi 5.5 to a locally installed hard drive on a Flex System x240 Compute Node. It illustrates how to learn a server pattern from an existing server, modify the extended UEFI-settings category pattern for that server pattern, and how to install VMware ESXi.

VMware ESXi 5.5 requires memory-mapped I/O (MMIO) space to be configured within the initial 4 GB of the system. Depending on the configuration, certain systems attempt to use memory higher than 4 GB, which might cause a failure. To resolve the issue, you can increase the value of the MM Config option to 3 GB through the Setup utility for each server on which VMware ESXi 5.5 is going to be installed.

An alternative is to deploy a server pattern that contains one of the predefined extended UEFI category patterns that is related to virtualization, which sets the MM Config option and disables the PCI 64-bit resource allocation.

  • Deploying a predefined virtualization pattern
    A category pattern defines specific firmware settings that can be reused by multiple server patterns. To deploy a predefined virtualization pattern, you create a server pattern and then apply a predefined extended UEFI pattern to that server pattern. That server pattern can then be applied to multiple servers of the same type, such as the Flex System x240 Compute Node or the Flex System x880 X6 Compute Node.
  • Deploying VMware ESXi to a Flex System x240 Compute Node
    Use this procedure as an example flow to illustrate the process for deploying the ESXi operating system to a Flex System x240 Compute Node.