I disabled HA host monitoring on the cluster, evacuated the first host, placed it into maintenance mode and then shut it down. I then replaced the internal USB key with the new model, and inserted the old one into a random port on the front. I downloaded the GParted Live ISO to my workstation and connected to the first server’s remote management card (iDrac/IMM/iLO). Unfortunately due to the critical nature of the hosts, the window wasn’t as large as we hoped. I had to find a way to reprovision ESXi on a number of hosts in the time allocated. We raised a Request for Change and scheduled a maintenance window with the client. We decided to replace the USB keys, meaning a full reinstallation of ESXi was necessary. This resulted in the familiar error of losing the device backing the boot filesystem. While ESXi will continue to run (the image is copied into memory during boot), it does mean the system is highly unlikely to boot next time. Recently at the company I work we discovered a number of hosts where the USB keys that had been provisioned were substandard, and had a low mean time between failure (MTBF). Unfortunately, cheap doesn’t always equate to cheerful, as not all USB keys are made equally. We no longer needed two 146GB disks and an expensive RAID card to host the boot volume and service console, as we could use cheap and cheerful USB keys. I remember thinking this would save us a lot of money. It was only when ESXi 4.0 came along were USB keys officially supported as a boot volume. Initially it was always a hack… I remember getting a 3.5 image and using dd in a very unsupported way to write an image. Since ESXi was introduced it has been possible to install it to a USB key.
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