When I finished my article about auto deploy I figured it was really lengthy and wanted to write down the bare minimum which can be used as a quick cheat sheet when setting up auto-deploy. Of course you will need to install vCenter, PowerCLI, Auto-Deploy and TFTP first, but I am guessing most of you will know how to do that. Here’s what you will need to do when you have all of the requirements up and running:

1. Add-EsxSoftwareDepot c:\tmp\VMware-Esxi-5.0.0-<buildnumber>-depot.zip
2. Add-EsxSoftwareDepot http://<vcenter server>/vSphere-HA-depot
3. New-EsxImageProfile -CloneProfile "ESXi-5.0.0-<buildnumber>-standard" -name "ESXiStatelessImage"
4. Add-EsxSoftwarePackage -ImageProfile "ESXiStatelessImage" -SoftwarePackage vmware-fdm
5. New-DeployRule -Name "FirstBoot" -Item "ESXiStatelessImage" -AllHosts
6. Add-DeployRule -DeployRule "FirstBoot"
7. Boot one of the hosts
8. Configure the host
9. Create Host Profile based on “first host” named “ESXiHostProfile”
10. New-DeployRule -name "ProductionBoot" -item "ESXiStatelessImage", ESXiHostProfile, <target_cluster> -Pattern "vendor=<unique hw identifier>"
11. Add-DeployRule -DeployRule "ProductionBoot"
12. Remove-DeployRule -DeployRule FirstBoot -delete
13. Boot all hosts
14. Assign Host Profiles to all hosts
15. Provide the “user input” aka create an Answer File per host
    
16. Reboot hosts –> done
17. Before you leave your PowerCLI session make sure you save your newly create image profile as a Software Depot so you can make changes later if and when needed! Otherwise the data will be saved in your image profile cache but you will not be able to make changes!
    Export-EsxImageProfile -ImageProfile "ESXiStatelessImage" -ExportToBundle -FilePath c:\tmp\ESXiStatelessImage.zip

That seems a bit more simplistic than my previous post doesn’t it.

** update: added step 17 **