ESXi 7 on USB guide

Pretty easy guide here you just need a few items;

- ESXi ISO

- USB key(s) or target USB drive and other source media to run ISO from

- Rufus application to put ISO onto USB 

There are some limitations on running ESXi from USB the key size can impact the partitioning of the target ESXi install but that is out of scope for this quick run down use keys over 16GB and it's a non issue for the homelab.

Install / launch Rufus and select your target device, ISO and check the remaining setting:

once this is complete you can head on over to your hardware of choice pop in this install media USB and target USB drive, if you have multiples of the same flash drive you can just start with the newly created boot media drive inserted and then take a note of it's ID > insert the new target drive and rescan for devices.

From this point its a lot of defaults settings, acknowledgements, keyboard layout and creation of the root account password once complete you can remove the install USB drive and reboot.

you will now be booting off of the USB key, now log in to ESXi and configure your Datastores etc.

One of the key benefits of this for me is not tying my ESXi install to my Datastores it's also easy to upgrade and rollback.