Hey everyone, I'm in a bit of a bind here. My ESXi server running version 6.7.0 crashed, and I'm trying to recover it. Luckily, I found a 6.7.0 ISO in my stash! The server is a Supermicro model, but when I boot it up, it goes to a ROM screen and just won't load the bootx64.efi file. It seems like there are some missing aliases for the disk because attempts to load it manually just result in errors, saying it doesn't exist or can't be read. My question is: if I replace the boot disk, can I boot from the ISO, install ESXi, and still preserve my data sets? I've got a plan in mind, but I'd love to get some advice from the community. Thanks in advance for your help!
2 Answers
Absolutely, you can install ESXi on a new boot disk. During the installation, it should recognize all your volumes, including any existing datastores. If the datastore doesn’t show up after installation, you might want to run `esxcfg-volume --list` from the management console. If the datastore appears, you can make it persistent with `esxcfg-volume --persistent-mount `. Good luck!
Reinstalling ESXi isn't a huge deal! My coworker does it all the time. Just be prepared to rebuild your networks and re-add your datastores. Once that's done, you can re-import your vmdks. We switched to SSDs because the USB drives we used before were a nightmare!
Wait, you were running ESXi off USB with microSD cards? That's risky! Totally get why you switched to SSDs.