6.5.1

vSphere Auto Deploy Networking Best Practices
Prevent networking problems by following vSphere Auto Deploy networking best practices.
vSphere Auto Deploy
and IPv6
Because vSphere Auto Deploy takes advantage of the iPXE infrastructure,
if the hosts that you plan to provision with vSphere Auto Deploy are with
legacy BIOS, the vSphere Auto Deploy server must have an IPv4 address.
PXE booting with legacy BIOS firmware is possible only over IPv4. PXE
booting with UEFI firmware is possible with either IPv4 or IPv6.
IP Address Allocation Use DHCP reservations for address allocation. Fixed IP addresses are
supported by the host customization mechanism, but providing input for
each host is not recommended.
VLAN Considerations Use vSphere Auto Deploy in environments that do not use VLANs.
If you intend to use vSphere Auto Deploy in an environment that uses
VLANs, make sure that the hosts that you want to provision can reach the
DHCP server. How hosts are assigned to a VLAN depends on the setup at
your site. The VLAN ID might be assigned by the switch or the router, or
might be set in the host's BIOS or through the host profile. Contact your
network administrator to determine the steps for allowing hosts to reach the
DHCP server.
vSphere Auto Deploy and VMware Tools Best Practices
When you provision hosts with vSphere Auto Deploy, you can select an image profile that includes
VMware Tools, or select the smaller image associated with the image profile that does not contain
VMware Tools.
You can download two image profiles from the VMware download site.
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xxxxx-standard: An image profile that includes the VMware Tools binaries, required by the guest
operating system running inside a virtual machine. The image is usually named esxi-version-xxxxx-
standard.
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xxxxx-no-tools: An image profile that does not include the VMware Tools binaries. This image
profile is usually smaller has a lower memory overhead, and boots faster in a PXE-boot environment.
This image is usually named esxi-version-xxxxx-no-tools.
With vSphere 5.0 Update 1 and later, you can deploy ESXi using either image profile.
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If the network boot time is of no concern, and your environment has sufficient extra memory and
storage overhead, use the image that includes VMware Tools.
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If you find the network boot time too slow when using the standard image, or if you want to save
some space on the hosts, you can use the image profile that does not include VMware Tools, and
place the VMware Tools binaries on shared storage. See, Provision ESXi Host by Using an Image
Profile Without VMware Tools.
vSphere Installation and Setup
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