Using vSphere Image Builder and Auto Deploy
VMware vSphere Auto Deploy is a cool feature introduced in VMware vSphere 5.0 that enables you to provide physical hosts with the ESXi software via the PXE boot instead of installing an ESXi server from a CD-ROM. Auto Deploy can be useful if you need to deploy many ESXi servers. If you only have a few ESXi servers, Auto Deploy is probably not the best solution for you because of the amount of work you have to do to set up Auto Deploy. To enable Auto Deploy, you need a vCenter Server, an Auto Deploy server, a DNS server, a DHCP server, a TFTP server, and PowerCLI. Yes, you have seen it right. PowerCLI is a core component of Auto Deploy. All of the information you need to enable and configure Auto Deploy can be found in the VMware document, vSphere Installation and Setup Guide. You can download this document from the VMware documentation page at https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/ .
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Because this is a PowerCLI book, we will focus on the PowerCLI...