Injecting RTL Driver in VMware ESXi 4.1 ISO using Windows OS

Howto inject RTL driver support in VMware ESXi 4.1 using VMware Customizer 2.7 in Windows OS 

I was installing vmware esxi on my test lab PC (Intel Desktop Board with RTL 8111 chipset NIC) but the Installation failed after I accepted the EULA and system halted.

unable to load module /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vmfs3: failure

I tried several times to restart the installation but with the same error. After some googling , I found that my NIC was not in ESXi HCL (Hardware Compatibility List), This message usually points to incompatible NICs.  The list of supported components is short for a reason. Most embedded NICs on desktop motherboards just do not stand up well under load. Since in a virtual environment all the Virtual machines are sharing the NICs it doesn’t make much sense to even consider supporting something that isn’t well proven.

Fortunately I found driver pack for rtl 8111 , but I had to do some driver injection in ESXi ISO File. Following is the procedure on How I solve this problem.

Requirements

# Windows 7 or +
# Copy of ESXI 4.1 Server in ISO format (Click here to Download) [Registration Required]
# RTL8111_8168_P55_integr_SATA_Ctrl.(AHCI).oem.tgz  (Click here to Download)
# VMware Customizer 2.7   (Click here to Download)

– Create a new Folder e.g esxi , Copy ESXi 4 ISO file in this folder,
– Download  RTL OEM TGZ file in same Folder,
– Download VMware Customizer in same Folder, then Execute it,
As showed in the image below . . .

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*   In first Browse Field, Select the ESXi 4 ISO image,
*   In Second Browse Field, Select the Drive Pack in OEM TGZ format
*   In Third Browse Field, Select any folder where updated iso image output will be placed

Now cick on RUN to execute process . Once the operation begins, you will see something like below . . .

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After completion of the process, it will notify you with the success results. Now burn this updated file on the Cd, and boot from this CD on your Server, and this time it will boot smoothly without giving you the error.

Happy Injecting 😉

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Regard’s
Syed Jahanzaib