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Location of VmWare ISO images

my environment is ESX 3.5

I have multiple ISO-Images and they are located on a Windows 2003 Server and I have them shared.

Multiple people have access to these ISO images.

I would like to be able to access these from within my Vmware infrastructure Client.

I see i can connect to the Guest OS cdrom drive to the client machine, Host Device or Datastore.

How can I pick a network share ?

Thanks

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Stappmeyer

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davismisbehavis

You can create a mount point to your windows server share within ESX itself, it uses SAMBA so that you can connect to windows without issue.

Log onto the ESX Server console with administrative credentials

at the root level make a directory using the following command mkdir /iso_library

Now navigate to the /etc directory and edit the fstab file, use nano fstab

Go to the bottom of the file and enter something like the following, changing where needed to suit your environment

//ServerIP/Sharename /iso_library smbfs usersname=domain/user, password=passwordhere

Hit Ctrl + X and select Y when prompted and then hit enter to save the file

run the command esxcfg-firewall -e smbclient ( This will enable the smbclient to talk to the windows server through the ESX firewall)

type cd /etc/init.d and type the command ./netfs start (This will replay the fstab and mount all drives contained within the file)

Run the command ln -s /iso_library /vmimages/iso_library (This command will link the newly mounted iso_library windows share with the vmimages mount that is visible through the Virtual Infrastructure Client)

Now when you go to connect an ISO within virtual centre and you click on vmware images you should have a folder link to ISO_LIBRARY this should map back to your windows server share.

Hope this helps, I remember when I was trying to work all this out the first time