Adding Third Party Drivers To A VMware vSphere/ESXi 5 Installation ISO

Stolen from http://alexander.walden.de/2012/01/18/making-your-own-esxi-5-installation-image/

1. Download the VMware vSphere offline bundle
2. Add the offline bundle as the depot:

   Add-EsxSoftwareDepot c:\temp\VMware-ESXi-5.1.0-799733-depot.zip

3. To show all software packages in these channels, run Get-EsxSoftwarePackage
4. Download the driver. In this case I’ve downloaded the driver for the OCZ Revodrive 3:

   ocz10xx-1.0.0-offline_bundle-751505.zip

5. Place this driver file in a location accessible to your PowerCLI window.
6. Add the “offline bundle” packages to the depot:

   Add-EsxSoftwareDepot c:\temp\ocz10xx-1.0.0-offline_bundle-751505.zip

   (remember to adjust the path to your environment!)

7. To check the software packages for a specific vendor run Get-EsxSoftwarePackage -Vendor Cisco or Get-EsxSoftwarePackage -Vendor He*for example
8. Next we will select a valid ESXi 5 image profile and create a clone that we will then enhance. Run Get-EsxImageProfile to get a list of all available profiles. For this example, I’m selecting ESXi-5.0.0-20111204001-standard as that includes the latest patches at the time of writing. To create a clone run the following command:

New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile ESXi-5.0.0-20111204001-standard -Name ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012.

Obviously feel free to adjust the name of the image as you need!

OPTIONAL: You may need to change the Acceptance Level of your image depending on which drivers you want to inject by running Set-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012 -AcceptanceLevel CommunitySupported

1. To get the list of VIBs in your profile run (Get-EsxImageProfile -Name ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012).VibList including the brackets
2. Now add the Cisco and Broadcom drivers to your profile by running Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012 -SoftwarePackage scsi-fnic, net-enic, net-tg3
3. When you run the command at 10. again, you will see how the drivers are now from Cisco and Broadcom – and not VMware anymore.
4. Now let’s add the HP VIBs by running Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012 -SoftwarePackage char-hpilo, hp-smx-provider, char-hpcru, hpbootcfg, hponcfg
5. Now check again with (Get-EsxImageProfile -Name ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012).VibList that all your drivers and updates are inserted.
6. Once you are happy with all your additions, you should export the profile into a ZIP file for later changes. Remember: when you exit the PowerShell session, all your work is gone! You can however skip this if you choose so. Export into a ZIP by running Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012 -ExportToBundle -FilePath "X:\VMware\ESXi5\ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012.zip" .
7. Now export your Custom ISO: Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012 -ExportToISO -FilePath "X:\VMware\ESXi5\ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012.iso"
8. To compare the original to your profile, run this Compare-EsxImageProfile ESXi-5.0.0-20111204001-standard ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012
9. And just in case you want to remove a package: Remove-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile ESXi-5.0.0-Custom-18012012-SoftwarePackage net-be2net (as an example).