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8 Replies Last post: Mar 17, 2009 8:50 AM by marklemon
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ESX deployment appliance

Jul 30, 2008 12:17 PM

Click to view brugh's profile Expert brugh 484 posts since
Aug 17, 2005

check out http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/1216

it's dedicated to making the deployment of ESX servers as easy as possible. anybody can deploy dozens of servers in a matter of minutes with this thing. no more writing kickstart scripts, it does that for you.

Tags: eda, esx, deployment, appliance
Reply Re: ESX deployment appliance Jul 30, 2008 12:27 PM
Click to view Dave.Mishchenko's profile Guru Dave.Mishchenko 8,867 posts since
Nov 15, 2005 Moderator
Are you able to do multiple versions of ESX and what about ESXi?
Reply Re: ESX deployment appliance Jul 30, 2008 12:33 PM
in response to: Dave.Mishchenko
Click to view brugh's profile Expert brugh 484 posts since
Aug 17, 2005
it's compatible with all esx 3.x versions. i haven't checked the installer for 3i yet. good idea, i'll have a look into that.
Reply Re: ESX deployment appliance Jul 30, 2008 1:29 PM
in response to: brugh
Click to view Dave.Mishchenko's profile Guru Dave.Mishchenko 8,867 posts since
Nov 15, 2005 Moderator
I wasn't clear with my question. Could I have multiple versions of ESX mounted for deployment at the same time (i.e. 3.5 U1 / 3.5 U2 ) - just wondering for the test environment. Here's what I did with ESXi and the UDA - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_PXE_install.html.
Reply Re: ESX deployment appliance Jul 30, 2008 1:50 PM
in response to: Dave.Mishchenko
Click to view glynnd1's profile Expert glynnd1 594 posts since
Dec 3, 2004
I like the way you are thinking Dave. I'll have to look into this later.
Reply Re: ESX deployment appliance Jul 30, 2008 2:50 PM
in response to: Dave.Mishchenko
Click to view brugh's profile Expert brugh 484 posts since
Aug 17, 2005

no, it only runs one version at a time. this shouldn't be a problem since test and production networks are usually separated and you'd create an EDA in each environment (they're only 160mb ram anyway). and if you do want different setups from one EDA, all you'd need to do is change the cd, import pxe files and you can roll out the new version with the same settings.

i will put the esx3i support on the todolist. would be a cool feature ;)

Reply Re: ESX deployment appliance Jul 30, 2008 5:05 PM
in response to: brugh
Click to view glynnd1's profile Expert glynnd1 594 posts since
Dec 3, 2004
brugh, you are correct that typically they would be very separate environments. However there are additional use cases for such an appliance, in Dave's case he has a home lab and wishes to be able to deploy various different configurations, but needed to have a different EDA for each config would be excessive.
I'll be moving over to a QA role shortly, and I can see me needing to deploy any version from 3.0 up, and in various configurations.

In any case, nice work and keep trying to improve it as you see suitable.
Reply Re: ESX deployment appliance Jul 31, 2008 12:16 PM
in response to: glynnd1
Click to view brugh's profile Expert brugh 484 posts since
Aug 17, 2005

i think here is where my filosophy deviates from the purpose you'd need. i built appliances to be lean and mean and really have as little local storage as possible. so when you feed it a CD, it only copies the 2mb of pxe files and that's it. also, the first purpose i built the EDA for is to have a consistent deployment in production environments both initial and disaster recovery!

i do however agree that specifially in test environments you may want to run different versions simultaniously. but this is pretty easy in EDA. it will automount CD's fed to it and all you'd have to do is import the pxe files (which i'm considering doing automatically too) and restore a saved backup. i made that as easy as possible so it should take you about 30 seconds to do so. hardly justifies having multiple EDA's around or any other device with multiple GB of cdrom data.

i'm trying to make it as widely usable as possible but i'm sure there's plenty of setups that it won't fit in. all things considering i don't think i'll add support for multiple versions simultaniously but thanks for thinking along with me.

Reply Re: ESX deployment appliance Mar 17, 2009 8:50 AM
in response to: brugh
Click to view marklemon's profile Enthusiast marklemon 23 posts since
May 17, 2006
Strangeness here. I have the EDA all setup and working on servers in two of my computer rooms. Now I'm trying the first server in my 3rd computer room and although it's PXEbooting fine and showing the correct menu with my list of servers (so the nic in my server is working fine for PXEboot and working fine to get a DHCP address and even loads the boot menu from EDA).

My network admin confirmed that the port on the switch is configured correctly (the same as the other two that I just built with EDA beautifully!)


But then after "determining hostname" or something similar, it pops out the the manual config screen as it does when it doesn't like the kickstart configuration file.


"Choose a language". If I fill these all in and choose the exact same settings to get the install (NFS server ip address and NFS server directory path) it fails


I double checked the kickstart config file and it really hasn't changed, but when I look at the other virtual consoles on my new esx host I'm seeing:


Alt-F3:


doing kickstart... setting it up


waiting for link...


15 seconds.


reverse name lookup failed


ks location: http://172.x.x.x/ks/ks.php?hostname=zyxw


transfering http://172.x.x.x/./ks/ks.php?hostname=zyxw to a fd


failed to retrieve http://172.x.x.x//ks/ks.php?hostname=zyxw


trying to mount device hda


then


ALT= F4


loader: failed to set default route: Network is unreachable


My EDA is on the same subnet as the DHCP address that it picks up, as well as the ultimate static address that it'll be given, so I agree with my network administrator when he says the failed to set default route error doesn't matter and is a red herring.


I'm about to try it all over again, but with another nic in this server. In the mean time... any ideas anyone?


cheers,


Kevin

______________________________

Ah, when I did the install from CD I noticed that the list of nics are ordered oddly:


8:0:0 –e1000 82571EB Gigait Ethernet Controller

8:0:1 –e1000 82571EB Gigait Ethernet Controller

4:0:0 – bnx2 BroadcomNetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T

42:0:0 – bnx2 Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T


Maybe this is the wierd ESX reordering problem that I've read about. It would explain why PXEboot is getting network fine to load the EDA menu, but then the ESX installer is looking for eth0 and vmware has maybe ordered the nics so nic0 is one of my PCI nics which isn't configured for the service console. I'll try again using eth3 then eth4. Hopefully one of these will work.

Message was edited by: Kevin

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