In the second part, we take a look at the PHP scripts that will generate the necessary files to boot our servers as well as how to get all the needed information and data to successfully install an ESXi Host.
For ease of understanding, I´ll start with a “fake database” PHP file.
As I can´t give the code for our database backend I´ve created this fake script to show the idea behind the whole thing.
Several years ago we had the challenge to install more than 300 physical servers as fast as possible. As booting and installing based on PXE was not possible due to not changing external reasons we had to find a different approach. Creating a custom ISO file for every system was also no real option as it would consume a lot of disk space and would be unflexible to handle.
Finally, I got the clearance to write this series of posts and I´m going to explain how I solved that challenge and reduced the pure installation time to only a few hours.
The interesting thing about the complete setup is the ability to install almost any OS and any device anywhere as long as you can establish a connection to a network path or share.
You can exchange the ISO file with a USB stick and run the installation that way. When you have no DHCP available, just set up your embedded IPXE script to a static ip that´s available in your network.
When using NSX a quite common task is applying tags to VMs. This can be done in several ways, in this post I´m showing how to accomplish that task via the RESTapi of NSX 4.1.2
The API calls and all other scripts in this post were run with these versions:
– VMware NSX Version 4.1.2.1.0.22667789
The automatic and unattended installation of virtual machines can be achieved with several techniques. In this series, I´ll show the approach of using CloudInit together with VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator. This will be realized by the use of Guest OS Customization of the specific VM.
In Part 3 we´ll be finally deploying some VMs with a new designed workflow.
The automatic and unattended installation of virtual machines can be achieved with several techniques. In this series, I´ll show the approach of using CloudInit together with VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator. This will be realized by the use of Guest OS Customization of the specific VM.
In Part 2 we will focus on creating the necessary Guest OS Customization data.
To use these Customizations we have to set Advanced Configuration parameters to each VM that should be deployed from your templates.
The automatic and unattended installation of virtual machines can be achieved with several techniques. In this series, I´ll show the approach of using CloudInit together with VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator. This will be realized by the use of Guest OS Customization of the specific VM.
First, we need to prepare a VM which will be used as a template later.
To do so perform a basic installation of the OS and apply the changes for the specific OS and version.
In this post the following linux distributions are covered.
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén