Can't see ISO

I am trying to build a linux vm. I have tried everything I can think of, but it still tried to boot from the net and thus doesn't find an OS. I have a datastore on my Esxi host and a usb drive. Server did not come with a built in drive, but I was able to load the Esxi software. I sftp'd my Linus OSes to the host and placed them on the datastore volume. I can browse to their location. I can also ssh into the host and cd to the datastore and see that they are there. On the vm I can browse to their location, and I have booted the vm to its bios and made cdrom the top choice. I don't even know if it make an attempt, the first thing I see is DHCP and trying to boot on the net which fail. I've used the change cd connection to poit to the datastore, and then changed it back trying to use the host cdrom. I one ISO I am working on has no trouble booting and starting a debian install, but VMware just doesn't see it. Any ideas?
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Have you tried using an ISO file on one of your datastores and setting the CDROM device type to "Datastore ISO File"? That's usually how I do it.
You can only do this step when the VM is powered on, so once you've selected from Local computer, you will need to reset/restart the VM without powering it off.
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Having an ISO on a recognized datastore and booting from it is how I typically install guests and test ISO's that I create. I place all my ISOs on an NFS share which I access from my ESXi hosts. What you are describing should work if it's on a datastore that is recognized by the host.
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I am wondering could this same trick be used to connect to the datastore on the ESXI host? That would certainly get around the slowness issue.