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I've come into owning multiple HP DL380's All with no harddrives.

I want to purchase a single ssd and load up ESXi and throw a couple virtual machines on the hard drive.

If I install ESXi/VMs then swap the drive to a different server will each server be able to boot from that harddrive? Or is each instance of ESXi registered to a specific computer?

devSteve
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    I would like to say yes, but I'm not 100% sure. If I understand well, you want to move your SSD around, and boot/install VM on each of your different HP DL380 ? – Tolsadus Dec 21 '16 at 15:10
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    The SSD would contain ESXi and the virtual machines. I just want to move around the SSD and test each server. – devSteve Dec 21 '16 at 15:13
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    I don't really see any reason why it wouldn't work actually ? – Tolsadus Dec 21 '16 at 15:24
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    I was not sure if ESXi registered hardware components and would recognize and deny the use if the hardware had changed. – devSteve Dec 21 '16 at 15:25
  • I feel it's possible when I read https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1279780-migrate-esxi-to-new-drive/ – Tolsadus Dec 21 '16 at 15:26
  • If you only move (not copy) the disk, the only problem I could think of would be different MAC adresses on the NICs. – user121391 Dec 21 '16 at 15:36

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If it's a single SSD, you can swap it from server to server with little issue as long as you have enough RAM/CPU to run the VMs you want to run. The only thing tied to the hardware is the license and the hardware profile.

Have you considered using PXE boot from a shared storage?

Jarrod L. J. Gibson
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    I had not thought of this... Looks like what i'm really trying to get at. Thank you for the input, I believe I have some reading to do now. – devSteve Dec 21 '16 at 17:53
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    Perhaps this could help: https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-60-pxe-boot-esxi.pdf Don't forget to upvote! – Jarrod L. J. Gibson Dec 21 '16 at 17:54