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How to download ESXi, vSphere and firewall ISOs shared on Baidu Pan (no Chinese account)

Updated 23 September 2026 · 7 min read

You searched for an ESXi OEM custom image, an older vSphere build or a firewall appliance ISO, and the only page that still has it is a Chinese software mirror such as sysin.org. What its download section gives you is not a file but a Baidu Pan share address, with four characters printed next to it on a line marked 提取码 — the extraction code. Nothing is hidden: whoever posted the file publishes the code right beside it.

What stands between you and the file is Baidu itself. The download button wants an account, and the account wants a Chinese phone number.

This post is about the three ways out, what each actually costs you in time, and how to check that the ISO you end up with is the real one.

Why these ISOs live on Baidu Pan in the first place

It is not piracy theatre. It is entitlement.

Since Broadcom took over VMware, downloads run through the Broadcom Support Portal, and the portal checks your Site ID's entitlement for the specific SKU before it hands over a file. Free ESXi came back in 2025 — ESXi 8.0 Update 3e is downloadable at no cost — but you still need a Broadcom account, and the things people actually hunt for are the things the portal will not give you:

• OEM custom images (Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Cisco), which carry the drivers your server needs to boot at all
• Older builds — U1d, U2e, 6.7 U3v — pulled from the portal when a newer one shipped
• Firewall and appliance images (PAN-OS, Check Point, Sophos, Veeam), where the vendor gates downloads behind an active support contract

A Chinese-language blog that keeps all of it in one place is, for a lot of admins, the only copy left on the open internet. And in China the default place to put a 1.5GB ISO is Baidu Pan.

Option 1: register a Baidu account

Honest version: possible, unpleasant, and then slow.

Registration wants a phone number, and numbers outside mainland China are rejected more often than not. If you do get in, a free Baidu account is throttled hard. We have measured it repeatedly: 50–70 KB/s, and opening more threads does not help because the limit is per account, not per connection. A 1.4GB ESXi ISO at 60 KB/s is about six and a half hours, assuming nothing drops.

An SVIP subscription (about ¥30/month) removes the throttle — we measure 15–19 MB/s on one — but you have to be able to pay for it from abroad, which is its own adventure.

Worth it if you pull files from Baidu every week. Not worth it for one ISO.

Option 2: a command-line client plus your own account

There are open-source Baidu Pan clients on GitHub that handle share links, folders and resumes properly. They are good software. They do not bypass the throttle — on a free account you will still sit at ~70 KB/s. Paired with an SVIP account they are the fastest self-hosted route.

The cost is setup: an account, cookies copied out of your browser, and a re-fix every time Baidu changes something.

Option 3: have someone fetch it for you

Full disclosure: this is what we do. BaiduFast keeps a premium Baidu account, pulls the file at full speed and hands you a normal HTTPS link.

For a sysin link it works like this:

1. Copy the whole link including ?pwd=skr3 — the extraction code comes with it, so there is no second field to fill in.
2. Paste it and press Check size & price. You see the real file name and size in a few seconds, before paying anything.
3. Pay or, if it is small enough, don't — links up to 150MB are free, 3 per day.
4. Download the direct link with your browser, IDM or aria2. It lives for 3 days. A folder arrives as one ZIP with the structure intact.

What it costs, at the prices on our pricing page: a 1.4GB ESXi ISO is about $1, because it is $0.79 for the first GB and $0.49 for each one after. A 20GB vSphere folder is $4.80 — per-GB would be $10.10, but every size sits under a cap, and the cap for anything up to 50GB is $4.80.

No Baidu account, nothing installed, and you never give anyone a password — the public share link and the 4-character code are all that is needed. That last point is worth keeping in mind for any service you use: a tool that asks for your Baidu login does not need it.

Whichever route you take: verify the ISO

sysin is a personal blog, not a vendor. The files we have fetched from those links have matched their published hashes, but "matched so far" is not a guarantee, and this advice holds for every mirror on the internet:

• sysin publishes SHA-256 / SHA-1 next to most downloads. Check it: sha256sum VMware-ESXi-8.0U3-*.iso on Linux, Get-FileHash file.iso -Algorithm SHA256 in PowerShell.
• Where the vendor still publishes a hash for that build, compare against the vendor's number, not the mirror's. A mirror can publish a hash of whatever it is serving.
• ESXi offline bundles and OEM images are signed. If a VIB fails its signature check during install, stop — do not --no-sig-check your way past it onto a production host.
• Licensing does not change because the bits came from a mirror. Running ESXi still needs whatever key your situation requires, and a support-gated appliance image is still support-gated. Get the file, then get it licensed properly.

FAQ

What is 提取码 / "extraction code"? A 4-character password on the share itself, separate from any Baidu account. sysin puts it in the URL as ?pwd=xxxx and usually repeats it as plain text underneath. If you were given a link without one, go back and ask — the file cannot be opened without it.

The link says "分享的文件已经被取消" or just errors. The share was deleted or expired; nobody can open it, including us. Check sysin's page for a re-uploaded link — they repost dead ones fairly quickly. You can test any link for free with our Baidu link checker before spending time on it.

Why is my download 70 KB/s when my connection is gigabit? Because the throttle is on the Baidu account, not your line. See Why is Baidu Pan so slow for the measurements.

Can you fetch a whole folder — a vSphere release with several ISOs? Yes. Folders come back as a single ZIP. Size is measured before you pay, and the size caps mean a big folder cannot surprise you with the price.

Is PanDownload an option? No. It has not worked since 2020 and the builds circulating under that name are repacks. Details in PanDownload alternatives that still work.

Does this work for Quark, 123Pan or Lanzou links? Baidu Pan is what we do today. Quark (夸克网盘) support is nearly finished — paste a pan.quark.cn link and you can leave an email to be told the day it opens, and your first Quark download is free. For 123Pan and Lanzou right now, our comparison of Baidu Pan download services lists which competitors cover them.

Building a lab rather than patching a server? Which firewall images you can get free from the vendor, and what to do when the only copy is a Baidu link.

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Only download software you have the right to run. We are a technical bridge — we fetch a file from a link you already have; what you do with it is on you. If a rights holder wants a link removed, our DMCA page has the contact.

Written September 2026. If a link or a number here goes stale, tell us in the Telegram group and we will correct it.