In this blog, we are going to cover the installation of ESXi 6.5 in our server hardware. Before starting the installation, You need to set up your networking. You have to request the network team to add the physical NIC as per your requirement. They will do their work like connecting this with switches and routers and provide the network interface. This way while installing the ESXi, the DHCP server will automatically assign it a dynamic IPv4 address. So Now you are ready to start.
1. Download the latest version of ESXi 6.5 from here
2.Mount the iso with the server directly or make a bootable CD/DVD
3.Power On the host and boot it through CD/DVD
4. Started, You will see the screen below
5. Press Enter To Boot, Next screen you will see for loading the ESXi installer
6. Just Monitor the progress, This is the next screen
7. Press Enter to continue and it will display next screen and press F11 to accept the agreement
8. On the next screen you have to choose your disk where you want to install it. Press enter.
9. Next you have to select the keyboard type and go with US Keyboard, This is default one. Press enter again.
10. The next screen would be asking for a password. Generally, the username for this is the root and password of your choice and confirm the same. Enter to continue.
11. It will take a few minutes to complete the installation setup. Just hold your horses here. After a successful installation, it will show you the below screen.
12. As you can see in the above screen, It is showing Please remove the installation media before reboot so remove that. If you do not remove it it will again start booting since starting. After removing that, Press enter. Next screen would be intereseting.
13. We told you to request the networking team to set up a physical network interface with the server hardware, In the above screen you could see the IPv4 address given by DHCP. Ahh, Do not worry if you want to change it, you can do it. Just press F2 to customize the setting.
A lot of customizations are available here. a) You can reset your password, b) Enable the lockdown mode(This is a new feature in the latest version of the ESXi server. If you enable this option the no remote user outside of your network can access your ESXi server.) c) Configure Management Network(Use for managing your host) and restart it.) d) You can see the system logs here. This option helps us to troubleshoot with the ESXi. e) You can reset the system configuration to Default but be aware and do not do anything unnecessary things with the server. If it is production hyper could cause customer impact and in IT, you will have chances to get an escalation email either from your client or customer directly.
14. Let’s suppose we want to change network settings so just go to Configure Management Network and you can see below screen where you can enter new IP’s.
Be aware that for any changes you made here will require a reboot to take effect. Now It’s all done. Congratulation, you have successfully installed ESXi 6.5.
15. Take the IP address and paste in any browser of your choice. ULR would be like – https://your-ip and hit enter. You will see below login screen of vmware.
That’s all for installing VMware ESXi 6.5. If you like it kindly share with others too.