Prepare the physical servers for the ESXi installation.

Prerequisites

  • The servers must be physically installed in the rack.

  • Ethernet ports must be connected to the physical switches in a redundant configuration.

  • Each physical server must have two dual-port Ethernet controllers, with a total of four Ethernet ports.

  • Physical CPU virtualization must be enabled from the BIOS on all physical servers.

The following table includes the network configuration details for the ESXi host:

Table 1. Physical Host Networking

Host Network Controller

Ethernet Port

Physical Switch

1

Port 0

1

1

Port 1

2

2

Port 0

1

2

Port 1

2

3 (required for resource hosts)

Port 0

1

3 (required for resource hosts)

Port 1

2

Procedure

  1. Mount the servers in a rack.
  2. Wire the ESXi hosts to the two physical switches and power supplies.
  3. Connect all the physical server Ethernet ports to the two physical switches in a redundant network configuration.
  4. On each physical server, connect and configure the embedded management controllers, such as Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI).