• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

  • Home
  • ESXTOP
  • Stickers/Shirts
  • Privacy Policy
  • About
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Cheat sheet – Auto deploy

Duncan Epping · Sep 5, 2011 ·

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 **

Share it:

  • Tweet

Related

powerCLI, Server auto-deploy, esxi, powercli, stateless, vcenter, vSphere

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Justin says

    16 September, 2011 at 00:41

    Step 3: It should read “ESXi-5.0.0-…” instead of “Esxi-5.0.0-…”

  2. gray says

    19 September, 2011 at 20:06

    I thought I read in the VMware Auto Deploy Administrator’s Guide that PXE boot hosts (i.e., auto deploy) do not support resource pools. Is this correct? Would seem like a fairly important limitation.

    • T.J. Albrecht says

      24 September, 2011 at 22:48

      They don’t support them locally anymore. It is now a function of vCenter:

      http://communities.vmware.com/message/1827806

      Specifically to allow Auto-Deployed ESXi hosts to use them 🙂

Primary Sidebar

About the author

Duncan Epping is a Chief Technologist in the Office of CTO of the Cloud Platform BU at VMware. He is a VCDX (# 007), the author of the "vSAN Deep Dive", the “vSphere Clustering Technical Deep Dive” series, and the host of the "Unexplored Territory" podcast.

Upcoming Events

Feb 9th – Irish VMUG
Feb 23rd – Swiss VMUG
March 7th – Dutch VMUG
May 24th – VMUG Poland
June 1st – VMUG Belgium

Recommended Reads

Sponsors

Want to support Yellow-Bricks? Buy an advert!

Advertisements

Copyright Yellow-Bricks.com © 2023 · Log in