Kickstart installation - how to define disk

[vmjoe]

Hello

I need to install 150+ vSAN hosts and therefore set up PXE boot with a kickstart script. We have hardware from two vendors. On the Huawei hosts I see only the disk where the ESXi installation should go, so the ks parameter install --firstdisk works. This is because the second controller with the vSAN disks is not yet configured...

On the Lenovo hosts however, by default I see also the vSAN cache and capacity disks, and the RAID controller with the disk for ESXi is listed as the last one... so I can't use "firstdisk". (The same applies to the Huawei hosts once the controller has been set to JBOD mode for vSAN)

According to the vSphere product documentation I shall be able to address the disks with their device path: --disk=/vmfs/devices/disks/mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0

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

But this does not work (at least not with ESXi 7.0.2), only the device names (naa.1234567890) are available it seems. The kickstart script stops with the error "... install --disk= specified, but drive "/vmfs/devices/disks/mpx.vmhba3:C2:T0:L0" was not found on the system. The available disk(s) are: naa.1234567890" etc.

Even on an installed host, there are no mpx or vmhba devices under /vmfs/devices/disks, only those random naa numbers. How the hell can I make a ks script that finds the correct disk to install?! --seventhdisk would be what I need in this case...

[stephan87]

Hi,

I found a solution. You can provide a list with multiple possible device names or model name. During installation the installer tries every entry until it has a match. But you need to know how the name is displayed in esxi. This is different from vendor to vendor, I think Therefore you can install one host manually and then run the following command: esxcli storage core device list | grep Model

In our kickstart file, I have created a list for our two vendor's dell and fujitsu. Sometimes we have a raid controller with two devices in raid1, sometimes we have dual micro sd's or dell boss cards.

install --firstdisk=PRAID\ CP400i,Dual\ microSD0123,Internal\ Dual\ SD,DELLBOSS\ VD,Dual\ microSD --ignoressd --overwritevmfs --novmfsondisk

Best regards,

Stephan

[NRGCG]

Old post, I apologize for raising a dead thread...

I'm looking for the same thing you're doing here but I have 3 different types of drive models that our machines have come with, 

TS128GMTS400, TS128GMTS400S, and now a drive with the model number "M.2 (P80) 4TG2-P"

I'm not very familiar with ESXi installation scripts but I'm learning so my questions are...

Can you have the quotes for spaces in the name of the drive model? 

What would that "install --firstdisk..." line look like? Is there a way to have the installation script (KS) prompt for information like IP Address for networking, subnet, etc...? 

Would it look something like this...

install --firstdisk=internal\ TS128GMTS400, internal\ TS128GMTS400, internal\ "M.2 (P80) 4TG2-P"  --overwritevmfs --novmfsondisk

Thank you in advance,

Nate