Auto Deploy has some great new features in vSphere 6.5 including a hugely improved and feature rich GUI built into the web client. The Auto Deploy Guide has been updated for vSphere 6.5 including a walk through of the Auto Deploy GUI and step by step creation of a custom ESXi image with deploy rules to boot ESXi hosts.
What is Auto Deploy?
VMware Auto Deploy works with Host Profiles to provision and customise your ESXi estate. When a host is deployed using Auto Deploy the state information is loaded to memory upon boot, the state is not permanently stored on the physical host by default. In theory this means there is no requirement for local storage, however we can configure stateless caching or stateful installs for use with a local drive if required.
What are the benefits?
After the initial setup you’ll benefit from quick and easy ESXi deployments, patches, driver updates, etc. provisioning of hosts on a mass scale all running the same version of code, huge savings in configuration times for new hosts and a more reliable and stable environment.
What do I need to make it work?
- An Active Directory DNS, DHCP infrastructure already in place, you’ll need to enable DHCP options 66 and 67…
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