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Installing ESXi on Supermicro SYS‐E200‐8D
  1. Download ESX 6.5.0 from https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/info?slug=datacenter_cloud_infrastructure/vmware_vsphere_hypervisor_esxi/6_0
  2. Download unetbootin https://unetbootin.github.io/
  3. Use unetbootin to Write ESXi image to USB
  4. Connect your USB, power and a Ethernet network with DHCP
  • Bottom left port of 4 is vnic0
  • Management port above the USB is optional
  1. Boot your machine and press DEL repeatedly after SUPERMICRO screen
  2. On the setup screen, go to the Save & Exit page
    • At the bottom under Boot Override, select UEFI to boot from your USB drive
  3. ESXi installer should start. Complete the installation to an internal drive, remove your USB
  4. Reboot your machine and press DEL repeatedly after SUPERMICRO screen
  5. On the setup screen, go to the Save & Exit page
    • At the bottom under Boot Override, pick UEFI OS to boot from your Internal drive
  6. Confirm ESXi boots and it has an IP
  7. Press F12 to reboot
  8. Reboot your machine and press DEL repeatedly after SUPERMICRO screen
  9. On the setup screen, go to the Boot page
    • For Boot Order item 1, set to UEFI Hard Disk: UEFI OS
    • Save and Exit with F4
  10. It should boot straight to ESXi each time now
  11. Confirm ESXi has booted using VMWare Fusion
    • File menu -> Connect to Server
    • Use the IP from the ESXi status screen,
@burnbrigther
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I am trying to install ESXi 6.7 and my install works per your guide above. After successfully installing 6.7, I don't see "UEFI Hard Disk: UEFI OS", I only see "UEFI Hard Disk". I select that and every time I start up, the system drops to the UEFI shell. I've tried installing from ISO imaged USB and the Virtual CDROM iso method - this seems to always happen. If you have any hints or maybe know why this is happening, it would be appreciated.

@rblm
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rblm commented Feb 1, 2019

OMG. I was fighting with a different linux install and I couldn't get networking up and running. I had set my boot mode to legacy, Resetting to UEFI allowed my linux distro to access network ports correctly. So very many thank you's

@mikeschinkel
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I couldn't get the networking to work because I assumed all the network ports would work. I tried several but never tried the bottom left port until I read this. Thank you for posting this!

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