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VMware ESXi deployment with Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP)

 
chuckk281
Trusted Contributor

VMware ESXi deployment with Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP)

Andrew was looking for some help with deployment options:

 

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Can anyone speak regarding RDP/SA deployment of ESXi?

 

SD, USB, SAN, or local HDD deployment. Do we have a solution?

 

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Ron replied:

 

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RDP does support deploying ESXi 4.1 today. The only caveat is that a script driven install to a flash device is not enabled today by VMware and therefore not supported by RDP.

 

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Other comments? How are you deploying VMware ESXi in your environments?

4 REPLIES 4
chuckk281
Trusted Contributor

Re: VMware ESXi deployment with Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP)

Paul had a follow-on question:

 

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I understand from Ron’s previous email that HP RDP now supports scripted deployment of VMware ESXi 4.1 installable to internal (blade server) disks.

Does anybody know, or has experience with, the possibility of scripted deployment of VMware ESXi 4.1 installable to internal (blade server) disks with SCCM (Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager)?

 

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Any comments or suggestions?

dgerolymatos
Occasional Visitor

Re: VMware ESXi deployment with Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP)

We use RDP to deploy all of our ESXi hosts with no problems.

 

You can use the "dd" command which is native to LinuxPE by extracting the image from the ESXi installation media following this VMware guide: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsp_4_pxe_boot_esxi.pdf

 

1. Create a new RDP task with a replaceable token to deploy the image to your internal USB (or SD) media with the following command:

dd if=/mnt/ds/images/VMware/%ENV_ESX_IMAGE_FILENAME% of=/dev/sda bs=500M

2. Deploy the HP Offline Bundle, NMI bundle, Cisco VEM etc using PowerCLI commands, or use the VUM CLI to instruct VUM to patch the target against a VUM baseline (from ESX 4.0 U2 onwards).

 

3. Configure and enable SNMP using the vSphere CLI

 

4 Personalise the ESXi image using PowerCLI scripts

 

Our RDP tasks do all the hardware comissioning, provisioning, ESXi imaging, personalisation, adding to vCenter etc in approx 20 minutes.

 

An additional benefit of using RDP is that once the ESX host is provisioned and added to the VMware cluster etc, you can use RDP to take a "backup" of the USB stick in order to re-deploy onto another blade (i.e. as a DR option).

 

See the attachement for our task order. Hope this helps...

Amityit
New Member

Re: VMware ESXi deployment with Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP)

Hi

 

can you please send me the process to create untended ESXi 4.1 via HP RDP on Local disk and also to SD Card

 

and the post installation (connect to Virtual Center , vDS and more )

 

Thanks,

Amit

Tusc
Advisor

Re: VMware ESXi deployment with Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP)

Are you guys somehow including firmware updates in your RDP tasks prior to the ESXi build? Seems there is no wasy way to do this outside of SUM.