You can set up networking for your vSphere Auto Deploy reference host and apply the host profile to all other hosts to guarantee a fully functional networking environment.

Prerequisites

Provision the host you want to use as your reference host with an ESXi image by using vSphere Auto Deploy.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Web Client navigator, browse to the host that you want to use as a reference host.
  2. Select the Manage tab and select Networking.
  3. Perform the networking setup.
    If you are using virtual switches and not vSphere Distributed Switch, do not add other VMkernel NICs to vSwitch0.
  4. After the reference host is configured, reboot the system to verify that vmk0 is connected to the Management Network.
  5. If no host profile exists for your reference host, create a host profile.

What to do next

  • Create a rule that applies the host profile to all hosts that you want to provision with the settings specified in the reference host. For writing a rule in a PowerCLI session, see Write a Rule and Assign a Host Profile to Hosts.
  • For hosts that are already provisioned with vSphere Auto Deploy, perform the test and repair compliance operations in a PowerCLI session, see Test and Repair Rule Compliance.
  • Power on unprovisioned hosts to provision them with the new host profile.