How to create your own bootable ESXi usb stick?

1. You will need to download two programs : “7-zip” and “winimage”
* 7-zip is free
* winimage is a shareware with 30 days evaluation period

2. Make sure you have an USB stick with at least 1GIG of space on it

3. Download the ESXi iso from VMware website. If you haven’t register with them, you will need to register to get yourself a license key.

4. Once you have downloaded the ISO, right-click it and use 7-zip to open it

5. Extract the “Install.tgz” file from the ISO image

6. Extract “/usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_3-xxxxxx.i386.dd.bz2″ from “Install.tgz” using 7Zip

7. Do the same and extract “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0-xxxxx.i386.dd” from “VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_3-xxxxxx.i386.dd.bz2″ using 7Zip

8. Now use start the “WinImage” program

9. On the “Disk” menu choose “Restore Virtual Hard Disk image on physical drive” and choose the USB drive

*You might get an error message if you are using Vista. I tested this on a XP system and worked fine.

10. Once the transferring is finished. Unplug the USB key and load it on the machine that you want to boot from.