Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Once you've completed these i ve steps, you're ready to start provisioning hosts with ESXi.
When everything is coni gured and in place, the process looks something like this:
1.
When the physical server boots, the server starts a PXE boot sequence. The DHCP server
assigns an IP address to the host and provides the IP address of the TFTP server as well
as a boot i lename to download.
2.
The host contacts the TFTP server and downloads the specii ed i lename, which contains
the gPXE boot i le and a gPXE coni guration i le.
3.
gPXE executes; this causes the host to make an HTTP boot request to the Auto Deploy
server. This request includes information about the host, the host hardware, and host net-
work information. This information is written to the server console when gPXE is execut-
ing, as you can see in Figure 2.7.
Figure 2.7
Host information
is echoed to the
server console
when it performs
a network boot.
4.
Based on the information passed to it from gPXE (the host information shown in
Figure 2.7), the Auto Deploy server matches the server against a deployment rule and
assigns the correct image proi le. The Auto Deploy server then streams the assigned ESXi
image across the network to the physical host.
When the host has i nished executing, you have a system running ESXi. The Auto Deploy
server also has the ability to automatically join the ESXi host to vCenter Server and assign a host
proi le (which we'll discuss in a bit more detail in Chapter 3) for further coni guration. As you
can see, this system potentially offers administrators tremendous l exibility and power.
Ready to get started with provisioning ESXi hosts using Auto Deploy? Let's start with setting
up the vSphere Auto Deploy server.
Installing the vSphere Auto Deploy Server
The vSphere Auto Deploy server is where the various ESXi image proi les are stored. The image
proi le is transferred from this server via HTTP to a physical host when it boots. The image pro-
i le is the actual ESXi image, and it comprises multiple VIB i les. VIBs are ESXi software packages;
these could be drivers, Common Information Management (CIM) providers, or other applications
