- VMware vSphere 6.5 Cookbook（Third Edition）
- Abhilash GB Cedric Rajendran
- 258字
- 2025-02-18 00:43:35
vSphere auto deploy architecture
vSphere auto deploy is a web server component that, once configured, can be used to quickly provision a large number of the ESXi hosts without the need to use the ESXi installation image to perform an installation on the physical machine. It can also be used to perform the upgrade or patching of the ESXi hosts without the need for vSphere update manager. Now, how is this achieved? vSphere auto deploy is a centralized web server component that lets you define rules that govern how the ESXi servers are provisioned. It, however, cannot work on its own. There are a few other components that play a supporting role for auto deploy to do its magic and here they are:
- The auto deploy service
- A DHCP server with scope options 66 and 67 configured
- A TFTP server hosting files for a PXE boot
- Servers with PXE (network boot) enabled in their BIOS
- Host profiles configured at the vCenter server
The ESXi Host first begins to network boot by requesting for an IP address from the DHCP Server. The DHCP Server responds with an IP address and the DHCP scope options providing the details of the TFTP Server. The ESXi Host then loads the PXE boot image from the TFTP Server to bootstrap the machine and subsequently sends an HTTP Boot Request to the Auto Deploy Server, to load an ESXi Image into the host's memory. The image is chosen based on the rules created at the Auto Deploy Server. The workflow is shown here:
