How to setup an ESXi on Hetzner

Again the question: Why? Well, mostly because I want an environment to test some things. And learn a thing or two. There are some possiblities to testdrive a few products, there are even more courses on LinkedIn, Pluralsight and what else is on the market. Problem is: Usually they are built around the concept of a fixed time frame. Usually it is not easy to carve out the time to sit down, get into the zone and then do something more. But then some restrictions apply. Either the resources are fixed, time for the lab is fixed or there are too many layers of abstraction to wrestle. (Narrator: That was before he figured out what will be needed)
Let's get started, shall we?

The setup

I choose Hetzner. For one, they are reasonibly priced, the support is pretty fast and competent and I had already some experience with them. Only downside is that there is only consumer hardware available. The enterprise line is...a bit more pricey. And there is no support on that kind of hardware. But hey, it is not really a production environment. Besides this blog. Which runs on the system. The choice fell on the AX41-NVME. It sports a Ryzen 5 Processor and 64 GB of memory. Just the icing of the cake are the two NVMe drives with 512 GB. Another advantage is that you can host it in Finland - which is a bit cheaper than Germany.
Things that you need to consider if you want to install ESXi on said box:You'll need the following additional items before you can install it via the KVM console:

• 1 x Reset service
• 1 x 16 GB USB Stick
• 1 x 1 G NIC
• 1 x Additional IP address
• 1 x Additional subnet /29 (monthly charge)

The USB stick will function as install medium, the additional NIC is needed because the consumer hardware in my case came with a Realtek NIC which is not supported in ESXi, the standalone IP is for a router VM.
After ordering and letting the technician cable your connection to the new installed NIC, you can order the KVM console via the Hetzner Robot. The installation is pretty straight forward. If you need more info, the Wiki of Hetzner is quite good. See: https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/dedicated-server/maintainance/kvm-console/ Only caveat: You need a JRE on your computer. Apart from that it works fine.

Update the ESX server

Because I downloaded and installed the server a few weeks before I found some more time to pursue the setup. In the mean time, VMware published an Update to ESXi - 7.0b, Buildnumber 16324942 https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/rn/esxi70b.html If you have not yet a vCenter to manage the update for you (which would also require a second host and we're not yet there) you can use `esxcli` to task your ESXi server to update itself. The process is described in more detail at https://tinkertry.com/easy-update-to-latest-esxi
In short, we need to do the following things:

• Enable SSH (Manage -> Services -> TSM-SSH -> Start)
• Enable outgoing HTTP Traffic (Networking -> Firewall rules -> httpClient -> Enable)
• Execute esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-7.0b-16324942-standard -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
• Disable outgoing HTTP
• Disable SSH
• Reboot

And there we have it!