VMware vSphere - 5.0 User’s Manual

VMware

vSphere® 5.0

Evaluation Guide

Volume Four – Auto Deploy

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VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide –

Volume Four

Table of Contents

AboutThisGuide .............................................................. 

SystemRequirements ......................................................... 

HardwareRequirements .......................................................

Servers ....................................................................

Storage ....................................................................

Networking ................................................................

SoftwareandLicensingRequirements ..........................................

VMwarevSphere ...........................................................

GuestOperatingSystems ...................................................

EvaluationGuideEnvironmentSetup ............................................ 

ManagementClusterConfiguration ..........................................

ESXiHostConfiguration .....................................................

LogicalNetworkSetup ......................................................

StorageSetup ..............................................................

VirtualMachineSetup .......................................................

EvaluatingAutoDeploy ........................................................ 

Introduction ..................................................................

AutoDeployRequirements .....................................................

PreparationTasks ............................................................

SetUpthePXEBootInfrastructure ........................................

TFTPServer ...............................................................

DHCPServer ..............................................................

InstallvSpherePowerCLI ..................................................

CreateanESXiImageProfile ...............................................

ChooseaDestinationvCenterFolderorCluster ..............................

ChooseavCenterHostProfile ..............................................

InstalltheAutoDeployServer .................................................

Windows ..................................................................

vCenterServerAppliance ................................................. 

VerifytheAutoDeployServerInstallation ......................................

CopythegPXEBootImagetoYourTFTPServer ................................

StartavSpherePowerCLISession .............................................

CreateAutoDeployRules .....................................................

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VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide –

Volume Four

CreateanImageProfileRule ................................................

CreateavCenterFolderClusterRule ....................................... 

CreateaHostProfileRule ................................................. 

DeployaHostUsingAutoDeploy ............................................ 

AutoDeployBestPractices ...................................................

ProductDocumentation ......................................................

HelpandSupportDuringtheEvaluation .......................................

VMwareContactInformation ...............................................

ProvidingFeedback ........................................................

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VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide –

Volume Four

About This Guide

The purpose of the VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide, Volume Four – Auto Deploy, is to support
a self-guided, hands-on evaluation of VMware vSphere® 5.0 Auto Deploy capabilities.

This guide covers evaluation cases that are suitable for IT professionals who have a very solid understanding
of VMware vSphere® 5.0 (“vSphere”) and are looking to automate the deployment and updating of
VMware ESXi™ hosts.

System Requirements

Hardware Requirements

This guide makes the following assumptions about your existing physical infrastructure:

Servers

You have at least one dedicated host configured for a PXE boot and capable of running ESXi 5.0 to provide
resources for this evaluation.1 For this evaluation guide, the host is expected to be configured by Auto Deploy to
join to an existing vSphere cluster to show the full capabilities of Auto Deploy. If you choose not to deploy into a
cluster, you can use a single host.

Storage

Auto Deploy loads the ESXi operating system (OS) to host memory. This means the ESXi host has no specific
local storage requirement. For the purposes of this evaluation guide, it will be assumed that the ESXi scratch
partition will be placed in memory. The user can configure alternate persistent storage for scratch when
configuring Auto Deploy for production use.

The VMware vSphere Evaluation Guide, Volume Four, deploys a new host into an existing vSphere 5.0 cluster.
This means that the new host that will be provisioned by Auto Deploy must have access to shared storage used
by other members of the cluster.

Networking

Each host has three virtual networks configured to separate virtual machine trac, VMware vSphere® vMotion®,
and vSphere management. For this evaluation guide, two separate vSphere standard switches are configured to
segregate trac. Your actual configuration may vary depending on your network needs.

The host used to test Auto Deploy must have network access on the same broadcast domain as the DHCP and
TFTP servers to support PXE booting. The host being tested will also require access to the Auto Deploy and
vCenter servers.

1. The se servers mu st be on the VMware v Sphere 5.0 Ha rdware Compatibil ity List (HCL) .

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For more detailed requirements see the following table:

VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide –

Volume Four

HARDWARE MINIMUM WHAT’S USED IN

ESXi 1 ESXi host

CPU – 2 processors of 2GHz
Memory – 2GB
Network – 1 x 1GB network
adaptor

Storage As needed to support virtual

machines for testing cluster
functionality

Network 1 VLAN for carrying VM trac; 1

VLAN for carrying management
trac; 1 VLAN for vMotion trac

THIS GUIDE

4 ESXi servers (Cisco UCS 1.3.1)
CPU – 2 quad-core Nehalem
processors at 2.6GHz
Memory – 48GB
Network – 4 x 10GB network
adaptors

3 datastores (Fibre Channel –
10 0GB each)

1 VLAN for carrying VM trac; 1
VLAN for carrying management
trac; 1 VLAN for vMotion trac

Software and Licensing Requirements

This guide makes the following assumptions about your existing software infrastructure:

VMware vSphere

This volume of the VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide requires vSphere 5.0 and licensing for Enterprise Plus.
The vSphere 5.0 evaluation license, available from the VMware evaluation portal, provides Enterprise Plus
functionality for 60 days.

Guest Operating Systems

This volume of the VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide makes no specific requirements on guest
operating systems.

Evaluation Guide Environment Setup

Evaluators must configure hosts, networking, and storage according to the following paragraphs in order to
carry out the exercises in this volume of the evaluation guide.

Management Cluster Configuration

The environment for VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide, Volume Four, is configured to use a separate
management cluster. This pair of ESXi hosts is home for virtual machines hosting various management
components. These include the VMware vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), a DHCP server, TFTP server and
the Auto Deploy server. It is expected that in most environments the PXE infrastructure, consisting of the DHCP
and TFTP servers, already exists, and that the evaluator will simply configure the correct parameters to support
Auto Deploy.

The Auto Deploy components can be installed on a Windows server (including a Windows server hosting
VMware vCenter Server™) or as a part of the VCSA. The following picture shows Auto Deploy installed on a
standalone Windows virtual machine. See the following installation details for more information on configuring
Auto Deploy.

ESXi Host Configuration

The VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide, Volume Four, uses a total of four server class systems with adequate
processors and memory to run ESXi and several minimally configured virtual machines. The servers used for this
evaluation do not need to be overly powerful, just reliable, and they must be on the VMware vSphere 5.0
Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).

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VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide –

Volume Four

Each server must have at least 1 x 1GB or 1 x 10GB network adaptor. The following diagram summarizes the
evaluation guide test-bed configuration.

vCenter Server Appliance

Administrator workstation

with PowerCLI and Image

Builder packages

Virtual

Appliance

APPOSAPPOSAPP

DHCF Server

TFTP Server

Auto Deploy Server

OS

PXE

Infrastructure

Management network

Management cluster

3x ESXi 5.0 hosts

Auto Deploy host

Shared storage as needed

to support virtual machines

Auto Deployed host needs
access to virtial machine storage

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VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide –

ads17a.vmworld.com

vmnic0

vSwitch0

VMK0: Management network
VLAN 2902 (Management)

Virtual machine network
VLAN 2908 (VM)

VMK1: VMotion01
VLAN 2904 (vMotion)

vSwitch1

vmnic2

vmnic1

vmnic3

Port groups

Name/VLAN

Volume Four

Logical Network Setup

The VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide, Volume Four, uses a very simple network configuration consisting of
three logical networks. The first is for vSphere management trac. (The management network is also used
when a host powers up to connect with the PXE infrastructure to get its boot information.) The second is for
vMotion, and the third is for virtual machine trac. Each logical network is configured as a port group on a
standard switch, with a corresponding VLAN configured to provide physical isolation of the network trac.

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VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide –

On the vSphere side, the network configuration matches the following figure.

Volume Four

Storage Setup

This volume of the VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide does not have any specific storage requirements, other
than what the evaluator must have for creating one or more simple virtual machines to test moving them to the
newly deployed ESXi host.

Virtual Machine Setup

This volume of the VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide uses several virtual machines to allow the movement
of virtual machines to the newly deployed host. The actual virtual machines used are left to the evaluator. The
following diagram shows the virtual machines, configured in the technical marketing test lab, that were used in
building this section of the evaluation guide:

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