You can use the VMware Imaging Appliance service (VIA) included with the VMware Cloud Builder appliance to image servers for use in the management domain and VI workload domains. For the supported ESXi version, see the BOM section of the VMware Cloud Foundation Release Notes.
You must have access to the VMware Cloud Builder appliance to use the VMware Imaging Appliance service. If you deleted the VMware Cloud Builder after bring-up, you can redeploy it as described in "Deploy Cloud Foundation Builder Appliance" in the VMware Cloud Foundation Deployment Guide.
The default root credentials for servers imaged with VIA are user root, password EvoSddc!2016.
Prerequisites
The servers that you image must meet certain prerequisites:
- PXE Boot is configured as primary boot option
- Install device is configured as the second boot option
- Legacy boot mode configured in BIOS
Note: Although the VMware Imaging Appliance service does not support UEFI boot mode, VMware Cloud Foundation does support it for servers configured outside of VIA.
- Servers are in the same L2 domain as the VMware Cloud Builder appliance
- Servers are reachable over an untagged VLAN/Network (VLAN ID 0)
- The VMware Cloud Builder appliance is deployed on an untagged VLAN/Network
- Server hardware/firmware should be configured for virtualization and vSAN and match the VMware Cloud Foundation BOM as described in the Release Notes
- Physical hardware health status should be "healthy" without any errors
- Any onboard NICs are inactive on the servers and only the two 10 GbE NICs reserved for use with VMware Cloud Foundation are active in BIOS
