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BoothsSysadmin
Contributor
Contributor

Remote Office Host & Datastore Provisioning

We're about to rollout esxi host at our 30 retail outlets. I am planning on cloning the sd card (which is running esxi) from one of the servers to use in the other 29 to save going through the install 29 times. Is there anything similar that can be done with the local drive that is being used as a VMFS datastore? I don't want to have to copy our template VM over the network to the 29 stores, would prefer it if the servers could be just plugged in, given an IP and be fairly ready to go. Is there anything out there that can do this?

Appreciate any input anyone can give.

Cheers

Daniel

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DavoudTeimouri
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hi,

You can use scripted installation. Check these links:

  1. http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=200458...
  2. http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/07/19/esxi-5-0-and-scripted-installs/
  3. VMware vSphere 5.1
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Davoud Teimouri - https://www.teimouri.net - Twitter: @davoud_teimouri Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teimouri.net/
BoothsSysadmin
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the response. I did initially look at this scripted install but I'm still struggling making the microSD card a target for the ESXi install, it always goes for the local SATA drives that I want exclusively for the datastore?

What I don't see in the links is anything about provisioning a datastore after the install and then populating that datastore with a template VM from the install media. Does that sound like something that should be easily achievable?

Many thanks

Daniel

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DavoudTeimouri
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

You can export your VM template to OVF or OVA file and send that with a medium such as SD card.

But the script will be increased your speed to deploy 30 hosts. Because you don't need to configure any configuration locally.

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Davoud Teimouri - https://www.teimouri.net - Twitter: @davoud_teimouri Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teimouri.net/
BoothsSysadmin
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for you help with this, think I'm getting there, just struggling to select the internal SD card as a location to install esxi? Each time I let the scripted install run it overwrites by installation media and script on the USB drive? Can anyone help?Capture1.JPG

Many thanks

Daniel

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