Have you ever wanted to install ESXi on a host that doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive?  Maybe you also don’t have a TFTP server, so installing over the network isn’t an option either.  I came across this situation at a customer site recently.

It turns out the easiest solution in this situation is to convert a USB thumb drive into a bootable installation key.  VMware’s online documentation describes how to do this.  The thing is, the instructions I could find were for using a Linux system to create the key and my work-issued laptop runs Windows.

It turns out you can use your Windows system to create the installation media, and it’s pretty easy.  This post will walk you through the process. Continue reading →