In example here, I am using latest ESXi 6.0 Update 1 image (VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.0.0.update01-3029758.x86_64.iso). Step 3 - Download and upload an ESXi 6.x ISO to the CentOS system. Step 2 - Login to the CentOS system via terminal and perform the following commands which will update the system and install the DHCP and TFTP services: Step 1 - Download and install CentOS 6.7 Minimal (64-Bit) For my PXE server, I am using CentOS 6.7 Minimal (64-Bit) which runs both the DHCP and TFTP services but you can use any distro that you are comfortable with. Not having worked with ESXi and UEFI before, I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to give this a try in my homelab which would also allow me to document the process in case others were interested. This is something we will be addressing in the future, so stay tuned. Note: Auto Deploy still requires legacy BIOS firmware, UEFI is not currently supported today. Not only is it possible to PXE boot/install ESXi 6.x using UEFI, but the changes in the EFI boot image are also backwards compatible, which means you could potentially PXE boot/install an older release of ESXi. In doing some research and pinging a few of our ESXi experts internally, I found that UEFI PXE boot support is actually possible with ESXi 6.0.

There are many benefits with using UEFI over BIOS, a recent article that does a good job of explaining the differences can be found here. You also could boot an ESXi ISO using UEFI, but we did not have support for UEFI when it came to booting/installing ESXi over the network using PXE and other variants such as iPXE/gPXE.įor those of you who may not know, UEFI is meant to eventually replace the legacy BIOS firmware. Historically, we only had support for PXE booting/installing ESXi using the BIOS firmware. He was helping a customer who was interested in PXE booting/installing ESXi using UEFI which is short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface. A couple of days ago I received an interesting question from fellow colleague Paudie O'Riordan, who works over in our Storage and Availability Business Unit at VMware.

Hp vmware esxi 6