6.7

To set up a reference host, you can use the approach that suits you best.
vSphere Web Client The vSphere Web Client supports setup of networking, storage, security,
and most other aspects of an ESXi host. Set up your environment and
create a host profile from the reference host for use by vSphere Auto
Deploy.
vSphere Command-
Line Interface
You can use vCLI commands for setup of many aspects of your host. vCLI
is suitable for configuring many of the services in the vSphere environment.
Commands include vicfg-ntp for setting up an NTP server, esxcli
system syslog for setting up a syslog server, esxcli network route for
adding routes and set up the default route, and esxcli system coredump
for configuring Esxi Dump Collector.
Host Profiles Feature Best practice is to set up a host with vSphere Web Client or vCLI and
create a host profile from that host. You can instead use the Host Profiles
feature in the vSphere Web Client and save that host profile.
vSphere Auto Deploy applies all common settings from the host profile to all target hosts. If you set up the
host profile to prompt for user input, all hosts provisioned with that host profile come up in maintenance
mode. You must reapply the host profile or reset host customizations to be prompted for the host-specific
information.
Configure ESXi Dump Collector with ESXCLI
Hosts provisioned with vSphere Auto Deploy do not have a local disk to store core dumps on. You can
configure ESXi Dump Collector by using ESXCLI commands and keep core dumps on a network server
for use during debugging.
A core dump is the state of working memory in the event of host failure. By default, a core dump is saved
to the local disk. ESXi Dump Collector is especially useful for vSphere Auto Deploy, but is supported for
any ESXi host. ESXi Dump Collector supports other customization, including sending core dumps to the
local disk and is included with the vCenter Server management node.
If you intend to use IPv6, and if both the ESXi host and ESXi Dump Collector are on the same local link,
both can use either local link scope IPv6 addresses or global scope IPv6 addresses.
If you intend to use IPv6, and if ESXi and ESXi Dump Collector are on different hosts, both require global
scope IPv6 addresses. The traffic routes through the default IPv6 gateway.
Prerequisites
Install vCLI if you want to configure the host to use ESXi Dump Collector. In troubleshooting situations,
you can use ESXCLI in the ESXi Shell instead.
VMware ESXi Installation and Setup
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