Can’t boot from your “embedded ESXi”? Here’s why ...

Ok, let me start by saying that I love Dell in a major way. However, there is one challenge that our team has encountered during the last two rounds of customer servers we’ve deployed which come with the Dell Virtualization option of embedded ESXi.

Just yesterday, during a customer engagement where we were deploying five new Dell 2950’s and three EqualLogic SAN’s with VMware, we ran into a bit of a problem. When we tried to boot the server, it would not initially boot from the “embedded flash” that had ESXi preloaded. Instead, it looked to the internal SATA DVD drive.

If you run into this problem, here's what you need to do.

1. Boot into the BIOS and make sure that you enable the embedded USB.
2. Deactivate the DVD drive.
3. Reboot the server into the BIOS again.
4. Change the boot order to boot from the hard drive and change the hard drive mapping to the USB.
5. Reboot the server one more time and Viola! You’re now running ESXi.

I put quotations around the word “embedded” because I initially thought it would be flash memory that was truly embedded into the board. However, as an example, when we opened a 1950 that was ordered for one of our customers, we found that “embedded” actually means that a USB stick is plugged directly into the internal USB port. Seriously?!

Check out the grainy photo below from my iPhone for proof! As a matter of fact, one of the first troubleshooting steps that Dell will run you through if you call with this issue is to re-seat the USB stick. Hilarious!