Deployment Guide
4
Hypervisor Deployment using the Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter
Executive summary
The Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter is a virtual appliance that streamlines tools and tasks
associated with management and deployment of Dell servers in your virtual environment. It reduces
complexity by natively integrating the key management capabilities into the VMware vSphere Client
console. It minimizes risk with hardware alarms, streamlined firmware updates and deep visibility into
inventory, health and warranty details.
The Dell Management Plug-in enables and speeds up bare metal provisioning from within VMware
vCenter. Rather than complicated server provisioning tools and processes, the Dell Management Plug-in
uses the Deployment Wizard to both configure hardware and deploy hypervisor. This automation
reduces deployment steps from 55 to 9, reducing the time it takes to go from an open box to a running
host.
Introduction
The Dell Management Plug-in deploys hypervisor onto local hard disk for Dell PowerEdge 11th and 12
th
Generation bare-metal servers. In addition, it deploys onto an Internal Dual SD Module with a minimum
of 1GB of storage.
Note: Automatic hypervisor deployments using the Dell Management Plug-in on Internal Dual SD
Modules are only supported for the ESXi versions and not supported on the legacy ESX versions.
The Deployment Wizard
The Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter uses the Deployment Wizard to step through the
hypervisor deployment process and schedule deployment jobs. The Deployment Wizard is displayed on
the left-hand navigation panel of the Dell Management Center. You launch the wizard from VMware
vSphere Client Home-> Management tab->Dell Management Center icon -> Dell Management Center.
The Deployment Wizard contains the following steps:
1. Select undeployed and compliant Dell Bare-Metal servers.
2. Select a deployment template.
3. Specify the Global Settings.
4. Assign identification to the deployed servers.
5. Assign a connection profile to each server.
6. Schedule when the server deployment is to run.