If you are lucky enough to be working on one of HP's smoking hot Nahalem servers, then you'll more than likely be tasked with installed VMware's ESX or ESXi on the server. If you are like me, then you'll be faced with an install where no optical drive is present on the server.

Here's how to knock the install out in short order:

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Sure you could go the painfully slow iLO method by utilizing the virtual media or virtual USB drive, but this can be problematic. And problematic is the last thing you want on a usually straight forward ESXi install.

Go out and get yourself an <a href="http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/667863/Memorex-8x-Slim-External-DVD-Drive/">external USB DVD drive</a> and plug in. On the pair of HP DL 360 G6's, that I worked on today, there was no need to even edit the BIOS boot order. It just loaded right up on the ESXi installer. The install took all of 3 minutes. On iLO as a test, which did not complete successfully, the install took closer to 15 minutes. 

This is definitely not a knock against iLO, as I am one of the biggest fans of the out of band management, but using this as a route to install the OS is not really what this was intended for especially considering there a much faster alternatives - like using an external USB DVD drive.

