Preload esxi or not?

[billdossett]

So...  I am confused on Cloud Builder now.  I have read somewhere that cloud builder can provision esxi using pxe, however in the cloud builder I am using, esxi needs to be preloaded and the hosts must ping or that section fails...  is the pxe esxi installation maybe just for vxRails?  I have a vxRail, but it was provisioned nearly 3 years ago and I don't recall exactly how it was done anymore.

I was kind of hoping I could just provision the whole thing from bare metal up as I am fairly sure I'm going to be doing this more than once and obviously setting up the hosts each time takes a fair bit of manual labor!

Thanks

Bill

[michieldhont_]

Hi @billdossett,

This forum is for questions related to VMware InstallBuilder. For questions related to Cloud builder please post your question in the Cloud Foundation forum:

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Cloud-Foundation/bd-p/9018

Best regards,

Michiel

[scott28tt]

@billdossett 

Moderator: Moved to Cloud Foundation Discussions

[shank89]

It's called vmware imaging appliance and is part of cloud builder. 

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-Foundation/2.2/com.vmware.vcf.via.doc_22/GUID-0C938F36-B645-...

First few steps in this post show it in use. 

https://www.lab2prod.com.au/2020/09/vcf-wld-usingapi-multinic.html