6.5.1

Table Of Contents

Any other passwords associated with profiles are in the clear. If you set up Active Directory by

using host profiles, the passwords are not protected.

Use the vSphere Authentication Proxy to avoid exposing the Active Directory passwords. If you

set up Active Directory using host profiles, the passwords are not protected.

The host's public and private SSL key and certificate are included in the boot image.

Using the Device Alias Conﬁguration Host Proﬁle

In vSphere 5.5 and later, you can persistently map a device (bus address) to a device name (alias). You

can modify the mapping by using the Device Alias Configuration host profile. Using persistent mapping

can help avoid compliance warnings for stateless hosts, and is also useful for stateful hosts.

The Device Alias Configuration host profile is selected by default, which means that aliases are assigned

to each device. For example, if a host does not recognize one of the NICs during the boot process, the

NIC aliases no longer change. That can help for management with scripts, and if you apply a host profile

from a reference host.

Note To avoid errors, do not disable or edit the Device Alias Configuration host profile.

To ensure uniform, persistent, and stable device naming across all hosts, use the device alias profile with

homogeneous hosts only. These are hosts that are identically configured with the same network and

storage cards in the PCI bus.

Note Always bring the BIOS up to the latest level. For systems with earlier versions of the BIOS, the

BIOS might not provide accurate location information for on-board devices. ESXi applies heuristics for

this case to keep the alias stable, even for these devices, this might not work under all conditions, for

example if changes are made in the BIOS setting or if the devices fail.

Device Alias Conﬁguration Compliance Failures

For hosts are not fully homogenous, for example, the hosts contain different PCI cards or have different

BIOS levels, if you apply the host profile from a reference host, a compliance check might result in a

compliance failure. The compliance check ignores extra devices on the host that were not on the

reference host. Select the host with the fewest devices as the reference host.

If the compliance check shows that he hosts are not fully homogeneous, the compliance failure cannot be

remediated without modifying the hardware itself.

If the compliance check shows that the device aliases, for example, names such as vmhba3, are different

from those on the reference host, remediation might be possible.

To remediate a host that is not provisioned with vSphere Auto Deploy, perform host profile

remediation and reboot the host.

To remediate a host that is provisioned with vSphere Auto Deploy, reprovision a host.

vSphere Installation and Setup

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