Automated Deployment

[rdhaines]

I've been doing a lot of research on how to do an automated deployment of ESXi 5.x and there's a lot of information out there.  However, I must be missing something.  I haven't been able to figure out how to create a script that creates different networking configurations.  For example:  different host name, IP address, etc...  This seems like it would be a basic need.  I've looked into creating a PXE boot server using Cobbler which may or may not do what I'm needing to do.  I still want to look into that, but my immediate need is to be able to build between 6-12 ESXi 5.1 hosts at a time.  Usually a few times per month.   Starting out, I would like to be able to boot from a thumb drive and walk away, come back and have the server built and ready.  Including having the appropriate Dell management agents installed.  Furthermore, I would like to simply be able to edit the "ks.cfg" file on each thumb drive with the right configuration information and boot up and be done.  I would envision having a dozen thumb drives, each with it's own modified ks.cfg file configured with the new IP and hostname info.

Thanks for any suggestions!

RH

[JPM300]

hey rdhaines,

Well you could create a custom dell image and put it on a bootable usb drive which will do the install of your esx hosts.  As far as the names go you may be able to some kind of scripting magic there however I have never done.

With that said you may want to look into Auto Deploy a little closer.  You create images and image rules to delpoy the images to.  For instance you can have a vendor rule that will apply a Dell image to dell servers, Cisco images to Cisco servers, ect.  You can also just create custom rules to apply the images: vSphere 5.5 Documentation Center

You then can create host profile rules, and cluster rules.  This will take care of all your IP / host configuration issues and it will also join the host into which ever cluster you have the rule setup for.

The only thing you will need to do is setup a pool of ip addresses for the auto-deploy to use / pull from and have your entries in DNS setup prior to any hosts being provisioned.  This way when a host fires up Autodeploy does everything and your host boots up all configured ready to use.

I hope this has helped.