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.

The default root credentials for servers imaged with VIA are user root, password EvoSddc!2016.
Important: The VMware Imaging Appliance service is deprecated in VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5.1 and removed in VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5.2. See Install ESXi Interactively and Configure Hosts for VMware Cloud Foundation for an alternative method of preparing ESXi hosts.

Prerequisites

For the supported ESXi versions, see the BOM section of the VMware Cloud Foundation Release Notes and the list of supported async patches in KB 88287.
Note: If you are preparing hosts for a VI workload domain where the ESXi hosts have been async patched to a later version of ESXi than the version listed in the BOM, the new hosts must use the later version of ESXi.