In most situations, you create an image profile by cloning an existing profile. Some VMware customers or partners might need to create a new image profile. Pay careful attention to dependencies and acceptance levels if you create an image profile from scratch.

The system expects that the acceptance level of the VIBs you add to the base image is at least as high as the level of the base image. If you have to add a VIB with a lower acceptance level to the image profile, you must lower the image profile acceptance level. For more information, see Set the Image Profile Acceptance Level.

As an alternative to specifying the parameters on the command line, you can use the PowerShell prompting mechanism to specify string parameters. Prompting does not work for other parameters such as objects.

Prerequisites

  • PowerCLI and prerequisite software is installed. See Install vSphere ESXi Image Builder and Prerequisite Software.
  • You have access to a depot that includes a base image and one or more VIBs. VMware and VMware partners have public depots, accessible by a URL. VMware or VMware partners can create a ZIP file that you can unzip to your local environment and access by using a file path.

Procedure

  1. In a PowerCLI session, run the Add-EsxSoftwareDepot cmdlet for each depot you want to work with.
    Option Action
    Remote depot Run Add-EsxSoftwareDepot -DepotUrl depot_url.
    ZIP file
    1. Download the ZIP file to a local file system.
    2. Run Add-EsxSoftwareDepot -DepotUrl C:\file_path\offline-bundle.zip
    The cmdlet returns one or more SoftwareDepot objects.
  2. Run the Get-EsxImageProfile cmdlet to list all image profiles in all currently visible depots. You can narrow your search by using the optional arguments to filter the output. 
    Get-EsxSoftwarePackage -CreatedAfter 7/1/2010
  3. Create a new profile, assign it a name and vendor, and add a base package. 
    New-EsxImageProfile -NewProfile -Name "Test #2" -vendor "Vendor42" -SoftwarePackage esx-base[0],esx-xlibs[0]
    The example uses the esx-base package. In most cases, you include the esx-base package when you create a new image profile. Names that contain spaces are surrounded by quotes.
  4. Use a pipeline to pass the new image profile to format-list for detailed information about the new package. 
    (Get-EsxImageProfile -Name "Test #2").VibList | format-list

Example: Creating Image Profiles from Scratch Using Variables

This command sequence repeats the steps of the workflow, but passes parameters as objects, accessed by position in a variable, instead of passing parameters by name. You can run the following commands in sequence at thePowerCLI prompt. 

Add-EsxSoftwareDepot depoturl
$pkgs = Get-EsxSoftwarePackage -CreatedAfter 7/1/2010
$ip2 = New-EsxImageProfile -NewProfile -Name "Test #2" -vendor "Vendor42" -SoftwarePackage $pkgs[0]
$ip2.VibList | format-list