VMware VS4-ENT-PL-A Setup Guide - Page 186

vSphere Installation and Setup 7 If you selected Enable stateless caching on the host, specify information about the disk to use. Option Arguments for first disk Check to overwrite any VMFS volumes on the selected disk Description By default, the system attempts to replace an existing ESXi installation, and then attempts to write to the local disk. You can use the Arguments for first disk field to specify a commaseparated list of disks to use, in order of preference. You can specify more than one disk. Use esx for the first disk with ESX installed on it, use model and vendor information, or specify the name of the vmkernel device driver. For example, to have the system first look for a disk with the model name ST3120814A, second for any disk that uses the mptsas driver, and third for the local disk, specify ST3120814A,mptsas,local as the value of this field. If you click this check box, the system overwrites existing VMFS volumes if not enough space is available to store the image, image profile, and host profile. 8 Click Finish to complete the host profile configuration. 9 Apply the host profile with the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere PowerCLI. Option vSphere Web Client vSphere PowerCLI Description Use the host profiles interface of the vSphere Web Client. See the Host Profiles documentation. See "Assign a Host Profile to Hosts," on page 174. Enable Stateful Installs for Hosts Provisioned with Auto Deploy You can set up hosts provisioned with Auto Deploy to cache the image to disk and to use the cached image on subsequent boots. After the image is cached, the hosts act like hosts on which an image is installed. Prepare Hosts Provisioned with Auto Deploy for Stateful Installs In some situations, it is useful to provision hosts with Auto Deploy and to perform all subsequent boots from disk. This approach is called Stateful Installs. Prerequisites Decide which disk to use for storing the image, and determine whether the new image will overwrite an existing VMFS partition. Procedure 1 Set up your environment for Auto Deploy and install PowerCLI. See "Preparing for vSphere Auto Deploy," on page 167. 2 Verify that a disk with at least 1GB of free space is available. If the disk is not partitioned, partitioning happens when you apply the host profile. 3 Set up the host to boot from disk. See your hardware vendor's documentation. Configure a Host Profile to Enable Stateful Installs To set up a host provisioned with Auto Deploy to boot from disk, you must configure a host profile. You can apply that host profile to other hosts that you want to set up for stateful installs. You can configure the host profile on a single host. You can also create a host profile on a reference host and apply that host profile to other hosts. 186 VMware, Inc.