How to install VMware ESXi 7.0 Hypervisor onto a USB flash drive

This video features a utility called Rufus that runs under Windows, used to prepare the USB flash drive to boot the ESXi installer, which installs onto the same USB drive!
A Supermicro SuperServer SYS-5028D-TN4T Xeon D-1567 12 core system was used for this demonstration, using iKVM remote keyboard/monitor/mouse to demonstrate the installation step-by-step. With Windows shares getting tricky, and Java being so insecure, I had to skip HTML5 iKVM this time around and go old-school this time and revert to tried-and-true Rufus, which is also a much more universal way to install ESXi into a lab onto a wide variety of compatible systems, without worrying about using up precious SSDs space.

[ZXK]

I never thought it was possible to install to the same media you booted esx install from. I always used two USB drives, one to boot from and the other to install. This is good to know. Thanks!

[soulcpp]

Hey Paul, nice video 👍 but I have a question: Is it possible to install ESXI on Aws, or Azure or DigitalOcean?
Actually, I want to use the vGpu provided by nVidia thus asked.
Cheers for your channel 🤙

[essamhassin]

what is USB type recommended? USB2 or 3 or 3.1 ?

[bowhunter]

Paul, I installed esxi 7.0 on a USB stick on a Dell Poweredge. It all seems to work but when I reboot it doesn't retain any of my configuration changes. E.g. vmware license, management network IP changes. Any ideas?

[hbrabim]

Sadly, i am getting a PSOD; No place on disk to dump data, no file configured to dump data, no port for remote debugger. :(

[mohamadrezasheshgelani]

Hello sir can we plug this usb to another server which has corrupt esxi and boot it.
In this scenario does esxi detects all vms installed before in server

[dungustavo]

how do I get the VMware pro 16 iso image ?

[pcanswers]

Hey Paul quick question how would i then move this install over to a SSD so i no longer have to use the USB?

[chocolaterain]

Hi Paul I tried to install the software from the USB drive but it is stuck at 70% and just hangs. You have any issue with this? My usb stick is only 4GB but imagine I don't need all of that just for the install to itself.

[iftequarahmed]

How can we install Esxi on Ram memory.