Running the F5 LTM VE on ESXi 3.5

Update: I’ve determined that installing the F5 LTM VE on anything earlier than ESXi 4 is a major pain.  I would recommend saving yourself the trouble of trying to hack it to work on ESXi 3.5 and just install on ESXi 4.  See here

I’ve had a recent hankering to get more practice with F5 gear.  I knew they had a free trial of the LTM product that was a virtual appliance but I had never set it up before.  As it turns out, the virtual appliance was a .OVA file type which wasn’t a import option on my ESXi3.5 host.  I did some playing around and got it to install after awhile.  Thought I’d share my steps just in case others hit the same road block…

1 – Download and install the VMWare Converter tool
2 – Click the ‘Convert Machine’ button to launch the wizard
3 – Specify the OVA file as the source, ESXi host as the destination
4 – Leave the rest of the options default
5 – Finish the wizard and let the tool run through the conversion
6 – When its done, the host should be visible in Infrastructure client
7 – Right click and edit the settings for the guest

image 8 – In the setting window select the SCSI Controller object on the left, and then click the ‘Change Type’ button on the right hand side of the screen.
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9 – On the next window, change the controller to ‘LSI Logic’ and click OK.

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10 – OK your way out of the open windows and fire up the guest machine.  When you start the guest machine you will get a warning about changing the disk controller.  Select ‘Yes’ and hit OK to boot the guest.

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11 – With any luck, the guest will boot to the login prompt where you can start the base configuration. 

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