Updating ISOs for spinning up new VMs is such a chore only because I first have to download the image from the internet, usually to my laptop, and then transfer it to my VMWare datastore. Some of these ISOs are 6GB in size, making the process a lot like watching a toaster make toast. So I figured this time I’m going to download the ISO directly to my host’s datastore.
First I need to determine the URL of my download. Today I’m downloading Windows Server 2016 from the Microsoft Evaluation Center. Except, after I complete the form, I’ll right-click the download button and copy the link location instead.
Next, I’ll logon to my ESX server via SSH. You’ll need to enable console shell this first if you haven’t already done so.
On my ESX server, I have a local vmfs datastore named LOCALARRAY in which I’ve created an ISO folder. To find where this is located in my file system I start by listing the default /vmfs/volumes location.
ls /vmfs/volumes/ -l