Stocking a data store with an ESX server

To stock a data store for a VMware ESX server, copy the installer files for VMware ESX server from the ESX installation media to a data store and copy boot image files to the TFTP server.

The task is different for a data store on a Linux, UNIX, or Windows system:

Stocking a Linux or UNIX data store with an ESX server

To stock a Linux or UNIX data store with VMware ESX server installation files, perform two tasks:

Copy the installation files to the data store.
Copy the boot image files to the TFTP server.

To copy the installation files to the data store

Create a directory in the data store to hold the ESX operating system installation files. For example, if the root directory of a Linux data store is /var/installs/pxestore, run the following command:
mkdir /var/installs/pxestore/VMware/<VMRelease>
In this path, <VMRelease> is the relevant VMware release, such as vmware2 or vmware3.
Copy the entire contents of the installation CD into the <VMRelease> folder. This creates a directory structure similar to the following example:
Example
/var/installs/pxestore/VMware/<VMRelease>/VMware/RPMS
/var/installs/pxestore/VMware/<VMRelease>/VMware/base
/var/installs/pxestore/VMware/<VMRelease>/VMware/TRANS.TBL

To copy the boot image files to the TFTP server

Copy the /images/pxeboot/initrd.img and /images/pxeboot/vmlinuz files from the installation CD to the x86PC/pxelinux directory under tftproot.

Stocking a Windows data store for an ESX server

To stock a Windows data store with VMware ESX server installation files, perform two tasks:

Copy the installation files to the data store.
Copy the boot image files to the TFTP server.

Before you begin

This task requires access to a UNIX system. Therefore, make sure you have access to a UNIX system before you start this task.

To copy installation files to the data store

Create a directory in the data store to hold the ESX operating system installation files. For example, if the root directory of the data store on a Windows box is E:\pxestore, run the following commands:
```
cd E:\pxestore
mkdir VMware
cd VMware
mkdir <VMRelease>
```
This creates a directory structure similar to the following example:
E:\pxestore\VMware\<VMRelease>
In this path, <VMRelease> is the relevant VMware release, such as vmware2 or vmware3.
Copy the entire contents from the installation CD into this VMRelease folder.
This creates a directory structure similar to the following example:
Example
E:\pxestore\VMware\<VMRelease>\VMware\RPMS\
E:\pxestore\VMware\<VMRelease>\VMware\base\
E:\pxestore\VMware\<VMRelease>\VMware\TRANS.TBL\

To copy the boot image files to the TFTP Server