Requirements

• A Linux system
• Libvirt and virt-install.
• ESXi ISO image
• virt-install

Build your image

./build.sh isos/VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.5.0.update01-5969303.x86_64.iso
./build.sh isos/VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.7.0-8169922.x86_64.iso
./build.sh isos/VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.7.0.update03-14320388.x86_64.iso

KVM configuration

You need to add the two following lines in kvm module configuration:

options kvm_intel nested=1 enable_apicv=n
options kvm ignore_msrs=1

Depending on the Linux distribution, the configuration file is located here:

• Fedora: /etc/modprobe.d/kvm.conf
• Ubuntu: /etc/modprobe.d/qemu-system-x86.conf

A reboot may be required to reload the module with the right parameters.

OpenStack

You need to associate a couple of extra parameters to the image:

• hw_disk_bus=sata: if you use a old OpenStack version, you may encouter LP1759420. The ESXi starts but cannot see its harddrive. In this case, use ide instead. It will slow the start up a bit, but everything will be functional..
• hw_cpu_policy=dedicated: this one is a nice to have to avoid Purple Screen of Death
• img_config_drive=mandatory: the esxi-cloud-init.py script within the image only support config drive.
• hw_cdrom_bus=ide
• hw_vif_model=e1000e: there is no virtio driver on ESXi.
• hw_qemu_guest_agent=no: and the image does not include any QEMU agent.

You can use the following command to upload you image:

openstack image create --disk-format qcow2 --container-format bare --file esxi-${VERSION}.qcow2 --property hw_disk_bus=sata --property hw_cpu_policy=dedicated --property img_config_drive=mandatory --property hw_cdrom_bus=ide --property hw_vif_model=e1000e --property hw_boot_menu=true --property hw_qemu_guest_agent=no --min-disk 1 --min-ram 4096 esxi-${VERSION}