I have been tasked with maintaining some PowerEdge R815 installed with VMware ESXi 5.5. It was previously installed off a disk from the internal optical drive. I was aiming to run Dell tools/updates and ESXi updates off a bootable USB drive (these servers do not have internet connectivity) instead of burning a new disk each time. I followed Dell guides and other online guides to try to get the USB bootable and identified as a drive.
- I created the Linux bootable ISO update package from Dell Repository Manager (linuxIso.iso).
- Using UNetBootin (unetbootin-windows-608), I put the ISO on a FAT32 formatted USB drive (Kingston DT R3.0 16GB).
- With Virtual Media as Detached in iDRAC, there is no system menu item for USB Flash Drive Emulation Type so I set to Attach and left the check boxes unchecked.
- Rebooted into System Settings and changed Boot Mode to BIOS.
- After reboot, the 4 options under Boot Settings are Boot Mode (BIOS), Boot Sequence, USB Flash Drive Emulation Type, and Boot Sequence Retry (Disabled). Under Boot Sequence I have SATA Optical Drive, Hard drive C: (Integrated RAID PERC H700), Embedded NIC 1, Virtual Floppy, and Virtual CD. Under USB Flash Drive Emulation Type I just have Virtual Floppy (Auto).
- In Integrated Devices, User Accessible USB Ports is set to All Ports On.
I have tried both front USB port and rear USB port and neither shows the drive in the Boot Settings. BIOS was previously at 3.2.1, but I got fed up and just burned the update package to disk to get it done, BIOS at 3.2.2 now.