6.5.1

Procedure
1 In a PowerCLI session, run the Connect-VIServer cmdlet to connect to the vCenter Server system
that vSphere Auto Deploy is registered with.
Connect-VIServer ipv4_or_ipv6_address
The cmdlet might return a server certificate warning. In a production environment, make sure no
server certificate warnings result. In a development environment, you can ignore the warning.
2 Determine the location of a public software depot, or define a custom image profile by using vSphere
ESXi Image Builder.
3 Run Add-EsxSoftwareDepot to add the software depot that contains the image profile to the
PowerCLI session.
Depot Type Cmdlet
Remote depot Run Add-EsxSoftwareDepot depot_url.
ZIP file a Download the ZIP file to a local file path.
b Run Add-EsxSoftwareDepot C:\file_path\my_offline_depot.zip.
4 In the depot, find the image profile that you want to use by running the Get-EsxImageProfile
cmdlet.
By default, the ESXi depot includes one base image profile that includes VMware tools and has the
string standard in its name, and one base image profile that does not include VMware tools.
5 Define a rule in which hosts with certain attributes, for example a range of IP addresses, are assigned
to the image profile.
New-DeployRule -Name "testrule" -Item "My Profile25" -Pattern "vendor=Acme,Zven", "ipv4=192.XXX.
1.10-192.XXX.1.20"
Double quotes are required if a name contains spaces, optional otherwise. Specify -AllHosts
instead of a pattern to apply the item to all hosts.
The cmdlet creates a rule named testrule. The rule assigns the image profile named My Profile25
to all hosts with a vendor of Acme or Zven that also have an IP address in the specified range.
6 Add the rule to the rule set.
Add-DeployRule testrule
By default, the rule is added to both the working rule set and the active rule set. If you use the
NoActivate parameter, the working rule set does not become the active rule set.
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