ESXi with UEFI iSCSI boot on Raspberry Pi

Steps

Setup iSCSI disk

• Create iSCSI Target and LUN in Synology
• Download RPi4 UEFI Firmware, and unzip it to a SD card which formatted as FAT32 partition
• Boot from the SD card, and perform following tasks using UEFI menu
  • Disable 3G memory limit
    Device Manager => Raspberry Pi Configuration => Advanced Configuration => Limit RAM to 3 GB)
  • Create device which mapped to iSCSI target
    Device Manager => iSCSI Configuration => Add an Attempt

After Attempt 1 created, Reset (restart) Raspberry Pi. Now, in Boot Manager, should see UEFI SYNOLOGY iSCSI Storage.

Setup boot order

• Change Boot order and let it before other network boot, otherwise, there will be too much waiting time.

Prepare ESXi installation disk

• Download and flush VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0-xxxx.aarch64.iso to USB device

Install ESXi

• Reset (Reboot) again, and in UEFI menu select boot from USB device
• Then perform ESXi installation, and select iSCSI disk as target

After installation completed, take out ESXi installation USB, then another reset is required,

Configure ESXi

• Boot into iSCSI
• Change ESXi name, etc.

Troubleshooting

Unable to see iSCSI disk in Boot Manager

Most likely is the iSCSI configuration wrong.

• Check iSCSI Target Name
• Check iSCSI Target IP
• Check iSCSI LUN ID (This issue costed me a few hours)
• Check User/Password

Synchronous Exception

After installation complete, suddenly cannot boot into any destination, and just show error Synchronous Exception.

End up, I have to recopy UEFI image into micro SD card, redo iSCSI configuration. Luckily the iSCSI has no issue, which contains installed ESXi image.

References

Boot ESXi-Arm Fling on a Raspberry Pi 4 Using ISCSI
Raspberry Pi 4 UEFI Firmware Images
ESXi on Arm 10/22 更新
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GBにESXi for ARM 7.0.0をインストール
Synchronous Exception at 0x00000000371013D8 #97