ESXi 8 Installer - Not Bootable

[omaticon]

Is there a WORKING ESXi 8 Installer roaming around?  I've downloaded the ISO from VMware multiple times today and each time the iso was no good even though it downloaded completely.

[maksym007]

How do you install your ESXi? via usb stick or via Server console with ISO file? 

[omaticon]

By default I burn the ISO image to CD/DVD then boot from it.  However, the ISOs available presently for both 7 and 8 do not boot.  I attempted to "burn" the ISO to a USB thumb drive as a result and my tool told me there is no boot partition within the ISO images.  I even tried with the ISO images released later in the day yesterday.

[LANialson]

Same issue. The ISO that I fully downloaded is non-bootable.

[jsm79]

both versions of 8 (8.0.0 and 8.0b) from https://customerconnect.vmware.com/downloads work fine for me (via USB). You need to use a tool to make the ISO image bootable when you create the USB media. I used Rufus. You can do an internet search for Rufus. It's pretty easy to use.

[stezon]

The same problem. Rufu and Elena Etcher report that iso is not bootable. Rufus do not burn at all, Elena does it, but of course there is no boot device.

[foafltd]

I am have the same problem.  I used Etcher and also from the following command from macos terminal.

sudo dd bs=10m if=VMware-VMvisor-Installer-8.0U1-21495797.x86_64.iso of=/dev/rdisk4

Both methods copy the image but niether are bootable.  Did anyone find a workaround?

[michelkeus_stwg]

Just tested this with the latest 8.0U1 image and using Rufus x86 v3.22.2009 (Portable).

It reports this:

Scanning image...
ISO analysis:
Image is an ISO9660 image
Will use '/isolinux.cfg' for Syslinux
Detected Syslinux version: 3.86 (from '/isolinux.bin')
Disk image analysis:
Image does not have a Boot Marker
ISO label: 'ESXI-8.0U1-21495797-STANDARD'
Size: 599.7 MB (Projected)
Uses: Syslinux/Isolinux v3.86
With an old menu.c32
Uses: EFI

---

When pressing "START" to start writing the image to USB it does notice the menu.c32 being out of date and recommends replacing it with an updated one. The fact that it detects the ISOLINUX/SYSLINUX bootloader does confirm that it is bootable. 

Post-write the log also indicated to me that this is the fact:

Found USB 2.0 device 'USB2.0 DISK USB Device' (1234:FFFF)
Using 'autorun.inf' label for drive 😧 'ESXI-8.0U1-21495797-STANDARD'
1 device found
Disk type: Removable, Disk size: 8 GB, Sector size: 512 bytes
Cylinders: 979, Tracks per cylinder: 255, Sectors per track: 63
Partition type: MBR, NB Partitions: 1
Disk ID: 0x2572D908
Drive has a Syslinux Master Boot Record
Partition 1:
Type: FAT32 LBA (0x0c)
Detected File System: FAT32
Size: 7.5 GB (8052015104 bytes)
Start Sector: 2048, Boot: Yes

---

Also performed a boot test in VMware Workstation 17 and both the ISO and the USB Stick I created were bootable.

[krzysieksalwa]

All worked fine for me when I recently deployed ESXi 8.0.

Here you have step by step guide, with all the download links

https://vmcloud.pl/2023/03/26/how-to-deploy-esxi-8-0/

I hope it will help. I have never faced issue with booting ESXi ISO.

Cheers

[foafltd]

Thanks all.  It looks like it was a problem ith balenaEtcher.  I got hold of a windows machine and installed Rufus portable as suggested and worked.

[LANialson]

I had the same issue with Rufus

[th3t1ck]

I'm having the same issue. I did the exact same thing a couple years ago for ESXi 7. Burn ISO to usb and it worked fine. I also downloaded Esxi 8 today multiple times and my burning software (Etcher) said it was not bootable. I can mount the ISO on my Macbook and browse it. I don't recall if I had to make a FAT partition first and make it bootable.

[th3t1ck]

Yeah I tried dd on Ubuntu. Same non-bootable problem. Can't use Rufus as I do not use Windows. If I could install ESXi 8 then I could create a Windows machine to run Rufus on... oh wait. ;^)

[th3t1ck]

Finally... I used the Dell image and Unetbootin for MacOS. Booted right up.