Mounting an ISO to an installed VM on VMWare ESXi

I had a little maintenance item to do which involved mounting an ISO to a working VM. Even when the ISO was attached from the VM settings, it somehow was not booting from the device, apparently ESXi sets the first boot device to the HDD by default once a OS is loaded and it will never boot from the CD/ISO. In this case I was using Linux gparted, but for the Windows guys it can be a Windows Server Rescue or something.

This is how I got it to work:

1. Set boot delay to 3000 milliseconds.

                 -Right Click VM -> Edit settings
                 - Options Tab, edit Boot options -> Power on Boot Delay parameter (I used 3000ms or 3 seconds)

2. Mount the ISO from the Datastore / Client DVD

                 - Right Click VM -> Edit settings
                 - Options Tab, CD/DVD Drive x, browse to uploaded ISO or Client Device.

3. Start the VM, at the boot menu hit ESC

4. Select CD/DVD boot option

5. Use your ISO media / Application.

6. When completed reset the Boot Delay parameter to 0.

-noveck