How To: Install & Configure VMware ESXi 6.0

If you are not familiar with VMware ESXi and how to install it, I will walk you through that process now. I am using an older version of ESXi (6.0) because I have a complete installation of vSphere (ESXi & vCenter) with this older version.

First you need to acquire the ESXi software which you can download from VMware:

Second you will need create a bootable USB. There are multiple options available for this task, but I prefer to use Rufus as it just seems to work everytime.

After we have created our bootable USB we can then begin the installation process:

Insert your bootable USB containing ESXi 6.0 and power on your server
The Standard Installer will be selected automatically after 5 seconds
Installer will load
Press Enter to begin the installation process
Press F11 to Accept the EULA
Select the keyboard layout
Enter a password
Select a disk to install ESXi on
I installed a 4GB USB on the back of my server, so I will use this for the installation
Press F11 to install ESXi to the drive that was just selected
You will get the Installation Complete message, remove the bootable USB and press Enter to Reboot
The reboot takes a little while, just be patient.

After the installation is complete we will now configure networking and DNS.

We are presented with the ESXi Screen, press F2
Next login with the password created
Select Configure Management Network
Select IPv4 Configuration to set a static IP address
Select the bottom option with spacebar, and configure your IPv4 Address, Subnet Mask, and Default Gateway. Press Enter to confirm
Select DNS Configuration
Set the Hostname you want to use for your ESXi Server. I chose “esx02” as this was my second ESXi server in my environment. Enter to confirm
Select Custom DNS Suffixes and enter Domain Name. Enter to confirm
Press ESC, a message to Restart the Management Network. Select Yes
Now you want to select Test Management Network
The fields will be populated with your Gateway, DNS Server, and Hostname. Press Enter to begin the Test
You should get an OK message for each test, if not you need to troubleshoot accordingly
Logout by pressing ESC. Confirm the changes on the login screen

A lot of tutorials I have come across typically stop after the steps above, but there is more that needs to be done! After the initial configuration of ESXi on the physical server, we will need to create a VMFS Datastore (or you can connect to one that already exists).

We begin by navigating to the address shown on the last screen in the previous steps above, mine was http://192.168.1.202, http://[fe80::230:48ff:feb9:7e5e]/, or if you have DNS setup you can use the hostname http://esx02, but be sure to include your domain name to access it using your web browser
We will get a message informing us the connection is not private, this is because there is a self-signed certificate being used. Click advanced and proceed
2 options: 1) Download vSphere client, 2) Connect to Host via web
I will show both, but we are going to start via web
Input username and password to login
You can choose to join Customer Experience Improvement Program
Now we have the status page of our ESXi server, click Storage
Click New Datastore
Create new VMFS
Name the datastore, I chose “local-vmfs-datastore”
Select the disk you want to use for your datastore
Hopefully you have a RAID card installed on your server, which means you will only have one option here. I thought the server I was using for this had a RAID card, but apparently not so I had to add each disk
Click the dropdown and select Use Full Disk, and click Next
You will see Ready to complete screen verifying your selection, click Finish
A confirmation screen informing that you are erasing all the contents currently on the disk will ask you a last time if you are sure, click Yes
After adding all the disks I had you can see the total capacity, free space, and type
Click on the local-vmfs-datastore link to get more info about the datastore

Now we need to upload an .ISO image we will use to create our first VM.

Click on Datastore Browser to upload an .ISO image of an Operating System to the datastore. If you do not have an .ISO image I suggest downloading CentOS 7 Minimal Install, but you can pick from 3 options on the Download CentOS Page. We will create our first VM with this .ISO
Create a Directory to store the .ISO image we are currently uploading, and any future .ISO images
I was having an issue uploading the image from the WebUI (I think my ad-blocker was interfering) so I switched to the vSphere Client to show it off and give it some love too
Login using your credentials
If this is the first time you will get the fingerprint notification, you can verify this on your ESXi server. You will also get the self-signed certificate warning
Click Configuration tab > Storage > Datastore > Right Click > Browse Datastore
Click the upload Icon, and you can click Yes to the warning

Now we are ready to create our first VM on our ESXi “Host” Server

Click the New Virtual Machine icon on either the WebUI or Client
Leave “Create a new virtual machine” selected and click Next
Name the VM, select the compatibility, OS family, OS version, click Next
Select the datastore, click Next
Click the drop-down for CD/DVD drive, select Datastore ISO File
Navigate to your _iso-images folder, and select the .ISO you uploaded
“Connect at power on” should be automatically selected
You can change the other settings to meet your needs, and click Next
Click Finish to complete the wizard
You will get a confirmation screen, click Finish to create the VM

Now the VM has been created and we can install the Operating System

Click Power on from either the client or WebUI
I decided to use the WebUI, click Console, and there are multiple options here, but I chose Open browser console
In the client we can see the same thing happening on the screen by clicking the Console tab
*** If you click in the Console tab on the client, you will need to push CTRL+ALT to get your cursor back. ***
Click Install CentOS 7 and press Enter
Select your language
Scroll down to click Network & Hostname. Click Ethernet to On, you can choose a hostname for your VM, and click Done
Click the Destination and click Done
You can update your Time Zone. You will need to turn network time off to select AM/PM
This is the minimal installation so there is no software to select from, click Begin Installation
Enter a root password
Create a user & check Make this user administrator
The installation will complete, click Reboot
The server will come up, login using root credentials. ifconfig wasn’t available so I used ip addr to get my IP address
I tested WinSCP and PuTTY to see if SSH access was enabled
VMware Tools is not installed so let’s take care of that by typing the command: yum search open-vm-tools
Type command: yum install open-vm-tools, and answer yes to the questions… or you could enter yum install -y open-vm-tools
reboot the server by typing command: reboot
Now we see VMware Tools is in a Running State (Guest Managed)
Click Edit Settings to remove the .ISO image from the VM. Choose Client Device from the drop-down

And now we are finished! The next tutorial I have planned is How To: Install VMware vCenter

How To: Install & Configure VMware ESXi 6.0

How To: Install & Configure VMware ESXi 6.0

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