VMware VS4-ENT-PL-A Setup Guide - Page 168

vSphere Installation and Setup n If you want to use VLANs in your Auto Deploy environment, you must set up the end to end networking properly. When the host is PXE booting, the UNDI driver must be set up to tag the frames with proper VLAN IDs. You must do this set up manually by making the correct changes in the BIOS. You must also correctly configure the ESXi port groups with the correct VLAN IDs. Ask your network administrator how VLAN IDs are used in your environment. n Ensure that you have enough storage for the Auto Deploy repository. The Auto Deploy server uses the repository to store data it needs, including the rules and rule sets you create and the VIBs and image profiles that you specify in your rules. Best practice is to allocate 2GB to have enough room for four image profiles and some extra space. Each image profile requires approximately 350MB. Determine how much space to reserve for the Auto Deploy repository by considering how many image profiles you expect to use. n Obtain the vCenter Server installation media, which include the Auto Deploy installer, or deploy the vCenter Server Appliance. See Chapter 4, "Installing vCenter Server," on page 71. See "Using Auto Deploy with the VMware vCenter Server Appliance," on page 195. n Ensure that a TFTP server is available in your environment. If you require a supported solution, purchase a supported TFTP server from your vendor of choice. n Obtain administrative privileges to the DHCP server that manages the network segment you want to boot from. You can use a DHCP server already in your environment, or install a DHCP server. For your Auto Deploy setup, replace the gpxelinux.0 file name with undionly.kpxe.vmw-hardwired. n Secure your network as you would for any other PXE-based deployment method. Auto Deploy transfers data over SSL to prevent casual interference and snooping. However, the authenticity of the client or the Auto Deploy server is not checked during a PXE boot. . NOTE Auto Deploy is not supported with NPIV (N_Port ID Virtualization). n Set up a remote Syslog server. See the vCenter Server and Host Management documentation for Syslog server configuration information. Configure the first host you boot to use the remote syslog server and apply that host's host profile to all other target hosts. Optionally, install and use the vSphere Syslog Collector, a vCenter Server support tool that provides a unified architecture for system logging and enables network logging and combining of logs from multiple hosts. n Install ESXi Dump Collector and set up your first host so all core dumps are directed to ESXi Dump Collector and apply the host profile from that host to all other hosts. See "Configure ESXi Dump Collector with ESXCLI," on page 189. See also "Install or Upgrade vSphere ESXi Dump Collector," on page 106. n Auto Deploy does not support a pure IPv6 environment because the PXE boot specifications do not support IPv6. However, after the initial PXE boot state, the rest of the communication can happen over IPv6. You can register Auto Deploy to the vCenter Server system with IPv6, and you can set up the host profiles to bring up hosts with IPv6 addresses. Only the initial boot process requires an IPv4 address. 168 VMware, Inc.