6.5.1

2 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_address
The cmdlet might return a server certificate warning. In a production environment, make sure no
server certificate issues occur. In a development environment, you can ignore the warning.
3 Enter the vCenter Server credentials.
4 Run Add-EsxSoftwareDepot to add the online depot to the PowerCLI session.
Add-EsxSoftwareDepot https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
Adding the software depot is required each time you start a new PowerCLI session.
5 Validate that you successfully added the software depot by checking the contents of the depot with
the Get-EsxImageProfile cmdlet.
The cmdlet returns information about all image profiles in the depot.
6 Create a new rule by running the New-DeployRule cmdlet.
New-DeployRule -Name "InitialBootRule" -Item ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-standard -AllHosts
The cmdlet creates a rule that assigns the specified image profile to all hosts in the inventory.
7 Add the new rule to the active rule set to make the rule available to the vSphere Auto Deploy server.
Add-DeployRule -DeployRule "InitialBootRule"
What to do next
Provision your first host with vSphere Auto Deploy and verify its image provisioning.
Provision the First Host with vSphere Auto Deploy
After creating a rule and adding it to the active rule set, you can provision the first host and check its
vCenter Server location to complete verification of the image provisioning of your setup.
Procedure
1 Open a console session to the physical host that you want to use as the first ESXi target host, boot
the host, and look for messages that indicate a successful iPXE boot.
During the boot process, DHCP assigns an IP address to the host. The IP address matches the name
you specified earlier in the DNS server. The host contacts the vSphere Auto Deploy server and
downloads the ESXi binaries from the HTTP URL indicated in the iPXE tramp file that you
downloaded earlier to the TFTP_Root directory. Each instance of vSphere Auto Deploy produces a
custom set of files for the TFTP Server.
2 Use the vSphere Web Client to connect to the vCenter Server system that manages the vSphere
Auto Deploy server.
vSphere Installation and Setup
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