Planning and Installing VMware ESXi - Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 - page 36

Of course, the default installation script is useful only if the settings work for your envi-
ronment. Otherwise, you'll need to create a custom installation script. The installation script
commands are much the same as those supported in previous versions of vSphere. Here's a
breakdown of some of the commands supported in the ESXi installation script:
accepteula or vmaccepteula These commands accept the ESXi license agreement.
install The install command specii es that this is a fresh installation of ESXi, not an
upgrade. You must also specify the following parameters:
--firstdisk Specii es the disk on which ESXi should be installed. By default, the ESXi
installer chooses local disks i rst, then remote disks, and then USB disks. You can change
the order by appending a comma-separated list to the --firstdisk command, like this:
--firstdisk=remote,local This would install to the i rst available remote disk and then to
the i rst available local disk. Be careful here—you don't want to inadvertently overwrite
something (see the next set of commands).
--overwritevmfs or --preservevmfs These commands specify how the installer will
handle existing VMFS datastores. The commands are pretty self-explanatory.
keyboard This command specii es the keyboard type. It's an optional component in the
installation script.
network This command provides the network coni guration for the ESXi host being
installed. It is optional but generally recommended. Depending on your coni guration, some
of the additional parameters are required:
--bootproto This parameter is set to dhcp for assigning a network address via DHCP
or to static for manual assignment of an IP address.
--ip This sets the IP address and is required with --bootproto=static. The IP
address should be specii ed in standard dotted-decimal format.
--gateway This command specii es the IP address of the default gateway in standard
dotted-decimal format. It's required if you specii ed --bootproto=static.
--netmask The network mask, in standard dotted-decimal format, is specii ed with this
command. If you specify --bootproto=static, you must include this value.
--hostname Specii es the hostname for the installed system.
--vlanid If you need the system to use a VLAN ID, specify it with this command.
Without a VLAN ID specii ed, the system will respond only to untagged trafi c.
--addvmportgroup This parameter is set to either 0 or 1 and controls whether a default
VM Network port group is created. 0 does not create the port group; 1 does create the
port group.
reboot This command is optional and, if specii ed, will automatically reboot the system
at the end of installation. If you add the --noeject parameter, the CD is not ejected.
rootpw This is a required parameter and sets the root password for the system. If you
don't want the root password displayed in the clear, generate an encrypted password and
use the --iscrypted parameter.
upgrade This specii es an upgrade to ESXi 5.5. The upgrade command uses many of the
same parameters as install and also supports a parameter for deleting the ESX Service
Console VMDK for upgrades from ESX to ESXi. This parameter is the --deletecosvmdk
parameter.