To customize ESXi images VMware recommends using official tool – vSphere ESXi Image Builder. In this example we’ll show how to integrate the driver for Realtek network adapter into the VMWare ESXi image. Let’s see how to add a driver to the VMware ESXi 6.7 installation ISO. To install ESXi on such a computer, you will have to inject the drivers for your network adapter into your ESXi installation image. Indeed, the ESXi image doesn’t support most of LAN NIC adapters. The most frequent error you see when trying to install ESXi from the original ISO image on a desktop computer is ‘ No Network Adapters’. If you try to install ESXi 6.7 image on a typical desktop computer, you are likely to face the situation when you don’t have a driver for some hardware (RAID controller, video card or network adapter, etc.) in your installation ESXi ISO. Despite VMWare ESXi image is certified (supported) for most popular server models, it doesn’t contain hardware drivers for all of them (unlike Windows). In this article, we’ll consider how to add (inject) drivers into the ESXi 6.7 installation ISO image.
