vSphere Auto Deploy ESXi v7 boot from SAN

[tinuwalther]

Hi

I'm trying to automate our ESXi installations on different Hardware (Synergy with NO local disk and others with local disk).

Our Synergy hosts has some SAN-storage attached, one is the boot disk using for boot from SAN and the others are either VMFS or raw LUNs.

If I want to write the ESXi installation on SAN, I can only do it with a host profile with:
- Enable stateful installs on the host = remote (or remoteesx)
- Check to overwrite any VMFS volumes on the selected disk = false
- Check to ignore any SSD devices connected to the host = false

The problem that I have is, all available disks of the host are in an array and the installation pick the first disk to write the ESXi installations to.
This can be any disks, perhaps a disk that is used for MS SQL Clusters (raw LUN) and this disk will be overwrite with the ESXi installation. Very bad, the SQL Cluster is dead!

How I can prevent the stateful installations to write the installation to any wrong disks?

With a Kickstart-Script I can use the Path-based identifier mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Martin

[depping]

you should be able to use --disk as an option, which can use the mpx path as the id if I am not mistaken.

[depping]

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.esxi.upgrade.doc/GUID-61A14EBB-5CF3-43EE-87...

[tinuwalther]

This option is only for installation with a script (Kickstart).

I use vSphere Auto Deploy and a Host Profile to write the cache to a remote disk -> Configure a Host Profile to Enable Stateful Installs (vmware.com)

[tinuwalther]

No one uses vSphere Auto Deploy and statful installs? Or no one has the same problem as me? No one has a correct answer for me?

[depping]

I never used it unfortunately, so can't help.