8.0

Table Of Contents
n With ESXi 8.0, you can set up a cluster that manages all ESXi host settings at a cluster
level.
n VMware customers can create a custom image profile based on the public image profiles
and VIBs in the depot and apply that image profile to the host. See Customizing
Installations with vSphere ESXi Image Builder.
Host profiles
Define machine-specific configuration such as networking or storage setup. Use the host
profile UI to create host profiles. You can create a host profile for a reference host and apply
that host profile to other hosts in your environment for a consistent configuration. For more
information, see the
vSphere Host Profiles
documentation or the Setting Up a vSphere Auto
Deploy Reference Host section.
Host customization
Stores information that the user provides when host profiles are applied to the host. Host
customization might contain an IP address or other information that the user supplied for
that host. For more information about host customizations, see the
vSphere Host Profiles
documentation.
Host customization was called answer file in earlier releases of vSphere Auto Deploy.
Auto Deploy Certificates
By default, the Auto Deploy server provisions each host with certificates that are signed by the
VMware Certificate Authority (VMware CA). For more information, see Managing Certificates for
ESXi Hosts.
Alternatively, if your corporate policy requires that you use custom certificates, you can set up the
Auto Deploy server to provision all hosts with custom certificates that are not signed by VMware
CA. The Auto Deploy server becomes a subordinate certificate authority of your third-party CA.
In the Custom Certificate Authority mode, you are responsible for managing the certificates. You
cannot refresh and renew certificates from the vSphere Client. In this mode, you also cannot
select only a set of hosts to provision with custom certificates, and you can manually sign custom
certificates only for stateful hosts. For more information, see Use Custom Certificates with Auto
Deploy.
With ESXi 8.0, Auto Deploy provides a third option that allows you to generate a certificate
outside vSphere and become independent of the certificate management in vCenter Server. For
example, you can generate a custom certificate by using a custom script or by using a provider
of domain name registry services such as Verisign. You can use custom certificates for only a
set of ESXi hosts. You can provide custom certificates for stateless hosts as well. ESXi hosts are
identified by the MAC address of the NIC used for network booting, or the BIOS UUID of the ESXi
host. You update the VMware Endpoint Certificate Store (VECS) with the custom certificate by
using PowerCLI. For more information on the new PowerCLI cmdlets, see vSphere Auto Deploy
PowerCLI Cmdlet Overview. The VMware CA must trust the custom ESXi certificates so you must
add the CA public certificate for the custom certificates to the TRUSTED_ROOTS store in VECS.
Auto Deploy also stores the custom certificates and when it recognizes a booting host with the
VMware ESXi Installation and Setup
VMware, Inc. 115