6.7

n
To create a custom image profile, use vSphere ESXi Image Builder cmdlets to clone an existing
image profile and add the custom VIBs to the clone. Add the custom image profile to the
PowerCLI session.
You must use vSphere ESXi Image Builder for customization only if you have to add or remove VIBs.
In most cases, you can add the depot where VMware hosts the image profiles to your PowerCLI
session as a URL.
5 Start a PowerCLI session and connect to the vCenter Server system that vSphere Auto Deploy is
registered with.
6 Use the New-DeployRule PowerCLI cmdlet to write a rule that assigns the image profile to one host,
to multiple hosts specified by a pattern, or to all hosts.
New-DeployRule -Name "testrule" -Item image-profile -AllHosts
See Assign an Image Profile to Hosts.
Note vSphere Auto Deploy is optimized for provisioning hosts that have a fixed MAC address to IP
address mapping in DHCP (sometimes called DHCP reservations). If you want to use static IP
addresses, you must set up the host profile to prompt for host customization. For more information,
see the vSphere Host Profiles documentation.
7 Power on the hosts that you want to provision.
8 Set up the host you provisioned as a reference host for your host profile.
You can specify the reference host syslog settings, firewall settings, storage, networking, and so on.
9 Set up the host you provisioned as a reference host for your host profile.
You can specify the reference host syslog settings, firewall settings, storage, networking, and so on.
See Setting Up a vSphere Auto Deploy Reference Host.
10 Create and export a host profile for the reference host.
See the Host Profiles documentation.
11 To provision multiple hosts with the host profile, use the Copy-DeployRule cmdlet to edit the
previously created rule.
You can revise the rule to assign not only an image profile but also a host profile, a vCenter Server
location and a custom script bundle.
Copy-DeployRule -DeployRule "testrule" -ReplaceItem
my_host_profile_from_reference_host,my_target_cluster
-ReplacePattern "ipv4=192.XXX.1.10-192.XXX.1.20"
Where my_host_profile_from_reference_host is the name of the reference host profile, and
my_target_cluster is the name of the target cluster.
12 Perform the test and repair compliance operations to remediate the hosts.
VMware ESXi Installation and Setup
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