VMware VS4-ENT-PL-A - vSphere Enterprise Plus, Setup Manual

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Image profiles
Define the set of VIBs to boot ESXi hosts with.
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VMware and VMware partners make image profiles and VIBs available
in public depots. Use the Image Builder PowerCLI to examine the depot
and the Auto Deploy rules engine to specify which image profile to
assign to which host.
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VMware customers can create a custom image profile based on the
public image profiles and VIBs in the depot and apply that image profile
to the host.
Host profiles
Define machine-specific configuration such as networking or storage setup.
Administrators create host profiles by using the host profile UI. You can
create a host profile for a reference host and apply that host profile to other
hosts in your environment for a consistent configuration.
Host customization
Stores information that the user provides when host profiles are applied to
the host. Host customization might contain an IP address or other
information that the user supplied for that host. See “Host Customization in
the vSphere Web Client,” on page 197.
Host customization was called answer file in earlier releases of Auto Deploy.
Rules and Rule Sets
You specify the behavior of the Auto Deploy server by using a set of rules written in Power CLI. The Auto
Deploy rules engine checks the rule set for matching host patterns to decide which items (image profile, host
profile, or vCenter Server location) to provision each host with.
The rules engine maps software and configuration settings to hosts based on the attributes of the host. For
example, you can deploy image profiles or host profiles to two clusters of hosts by writing two rules, each
matching on the network address of one cluster.
For hosts that have not yet been added to a vCenter Server system, the Auto Deploy server checks with the
rules engine before serving image profiles, host profiles, and inventory location information to hosts. For
hosts that are managed by a vCenter Server system, the image profile, host profile, and inventory location
that vCenter Server has stored in the host object is used. If you make changes to rules, you can use Auto
Deploy PowerCLI cmdlets to test and repair rule compliance. When you repair rule compliance for a host,
that host's image profile and host profile assignments are updated.
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You must test and repair rule compliance for any host managed by a vCenter Server system even if
those hosts were not added to the vCenter Server system by Auto Deploy. See “Test and Repair Rule
Compliance,” on page 176.
The rules engine includes rules and rule sets.
Rules
Rules can assign image profiles and host profiles to a set of hosts, or specify
the location (folder or cluster) of a host on the target vCenter Server system.
A rule can identify target hosts by boot MAC address, SMBIOS information,
BIOS UUID, Vendor, Model, or fixed DHCP IP address. In most cases, rules
apply to multiple hosts. You create rules by using Auto Deploy PowerCLI
cmdlets. After you create a rule, you must add it to a rule set. Only two rule
sets, the active rule set and the working rule set, are supported. A rule can
Chapter 7 Installing ESXi
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