Auto Deploy and Kickstart - pros and cons

[burvil]

I have an existing kickstart setup I am able to use for deploying a basic installation of ESXi as well as other OSes. For this, we PXE boot a server, go through a menu, and choose the appropriate option.   I'm evaluating using Auto Deploy.  Can I specify as a menu choice an option to use Auto Deploy instead of using kickstart? 

Also,

- will VMware be replacing kickstart as an option with Auto Deploy?

- any advantages/disadvantages between the two methods?  From what I've seen online, they seem comparable.

[CoolRam]

There is two different that is scripted install and auto-deploy.

Scripted Install: by using this you are using inattentive install with specify the disk postinstal and setting .

Auto-deploy: You boot the stateless by using autodeploy with specified image.

Scripted install anyone can use to boot the server . To use auto-depoly and host profile feature you should have enterprise license.

There is no comparison over each other.

[burvil]

OK, that kind of, sort of, answers my last question.  What about my first two questions, i.e.:

1. Can I specify as a menu choice an option to use Auto Deploy instead of using kickstart?

2. Will VMware be replacing kickstart as an option with Auto Deploy? (Or more like, has anyone heard that this will happen?)  My guess is that as VMware tries more and more to differentiate itself from Linux, especially with RHEV being a competitor to Vsphere/ESXi, that they'd try to push their own proprietary methods more. 

[CoolRam]

To your First answer You can just customize the profile in terms of adding the vibs but you can just boot in the memory not able to install.

To your second option, I will say NO, Never since the auto deploy is not the installation method its just used to load the image  in memory.

[sneddo]

To your second option, I will say NO, Never since the auto deploy is not the installation method its just used to load the image  in memory.

Not entirely true, you can do stateless caching and stateful installs with autodeploy.

https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.install.doc/GUID-A5F8F467-4E8D-467A-9A40...

[CoolRam]

Yes you can say that but the statefull is cam in picture because if you hit the scenario where you autodeploy server is down and your host is boot up because of some issue than your whole environment will down. To give some level of HA kind of scenario stateful comes in picture. so the primary purpose is stateless.

[sneddo]

Yes you can say that but the statefull is cam in picture because if you hit the scenario where you autodeploy server is down and your host is boot up because of some issue than your whole environment will down. To give some level of HA kind of scenario stateful comes in picture. so the primary purpose is stateless.

I don't quite understand what you are saying here (I'm guessing English is not your first language). Both stateless caching and stateful installs will function if your autodeply infrastructure is unavailable. Stateful installs is a full install to disk, whereas stateless caching is between a stateful and stateless install, caching the image for use if your Autodeploy environment is unavailable.

Anyway, this is getting a little sidetracked. As for the difference? The main limitation would be licensing restrictions (as @CoolRam suggested in a previous post) as AutoDeploy uses Host Profiles. Personally I've used both and both have their purpose, but have been very limited in my deployments so can't answer your other questions.

[burvil]

Thanks, this is helpful.  We do use Host Profiles, but we also have kickstart as our standard deployment method for physical servers, primarily for Linux, but it's also working for Windows and ESXi, too.  However, using it for ESXi means we deploy a server with a basic setup, and currently need to apply Host Profiles manually.  I'd like to use the existing kickstart infrastructure, and update the current ESXi install/upgrade choice to trigger an autodeploy of ESXi 6.0 to the hypervisor. 

There seems to be some overlap between the two (e.g. both use TFTP and can use DHCP, and both deploy an OS onto the server, albeit with different methods).  What I specifically need here is:

a. a way to, in the kickstart section to install ESXi 6.0, to trigger an auto deploy; I'd imagine I'd specify the auto deploy server as an option, e.g. ks= ... install=http://auto-deploy-server-ip-here/install/...

OR

b. a way to, in the kickstart ks.cfg configuration (in vmware's documentation, e.g. vSphere 6.0 Documentation Center, it refers to them as scripts), point to an autodeploy server to finish what kickstart starts.

Thoughts?