A few days ago VMware released an updated custom HP ISO image for ESXi 5.0 Update 1, which includes all of the HP specific drivers and agents. The big difference between this release and prior HP ESXi 5.0 releases is that you can download them directly from VMware and not from HP’s depot. This should make the process less cumbersome. HP states the ISO image will support G5-Gen8 servers, and it also is devoid of the HP custom license file that has caused problems in the past for some people.
To review the contents of the updated image (June 2012), you can find the version details here. To download the ISO from VMware’s web site, go here. In case you want to build your own HP ESXi 5.0 image with all the latest security patches and drivers, check out my how-to blog article here. The VMware custom ISO is not using the latest build, so for those that are super security conscious and need to load a fully patched image, you will need to refer to my blog article. Otherwise you can of course patch after the fact.
