Creating a custom ESXi image
Drivers for some supported hardware devices are not included as part of the base ESXi image. These devices require a driver be installed before the hardware can be used in vSphere.
How to do it…
Third-party drivers are packaged as vSphere Installation Bundles (VIBs). A VIB file is similar to a ZIP archive in that it is a single file that includes an archive of the driver files, an XML descriptor file, and a signature file. VIB files have the .vib file extension.
The required drives can be installed after ESXi has been installed, using the esxcli command:
esxcli software vib install -v <path to vib package>
A custom ESXi image can also be created using the Image Builder tools included with PowerCLI. PowerCLI can be downloaded ...
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