How to clone ESXi setup

[mk1970g]

I have a pretty complicated network setup on one of my ESXi hosts (vSwitch1 has 55 VLANs on top of vmnic1). I want to clone this setup to other identical ESXi hosts, the only difference should be the static IP addresses assigned to the management network. Any ideas how to do this? In other words, I don't want to perform the vSwitch configuration again for all remaining ESXi hosts...

[depping]

take a look at the following article: http://vmblog.com/archive/2008/08/16/automatically-configure-virtualcenter-virtual-networking-using-...

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

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[mk1970g]

I activated SSH and copied /etc/vmware/esx.conf from all my ESXi hosts. Then I compared the configuration files with "diff -u" and added all the missing "/net/vswitch/child" lines from the already-configured ESXi to the other ESXi hosts, copied the modifed configuration files and rebooted the other ESXi hosts from the SSH session. After reboot I had all my VLANs :smileylaugh:

The difference between two ESXi host are now:

• hostname

• IP and MAC addresses

• /storage/diagPart/lun

• /system/uuid

[Aftenposten]

I only have half a dozen vlan's but use ITQ VLan and Portgroup Manager when setting up a new esx host: http://www.run-virtual.com/?page_id=160. Haven't tried it on ESXi though, but I guess it should work.

Regards,

GB

[BContario]

It would work on ESXi if we used Virtual Center, but ITQ VLan and Portgroup Manager makes one connection and allows you to copy settings from one host to another on the same connection. In our case ITQ VLan and Portgroup Manager would have to connect to one host, save/export the settings, disconnect, connect to another host, and then apply the settings, but that functionality is not there yet.

-Brian