Package Warning Message When You Assign an Image Profile to a vSphere Auto Deploy Host

When you run a vSphere PowerCLI cmdlet that assigns an image profile that is not vSphere Auto Deploy ready, a warning message appears.

Problem

When you write or modify rules to assign an image profile to one or more hosts, the following error results:

Warning: Image Profile <name-here> contains one or more software packages that are not stateless-ready. You may experience problems when using this profile with Auto Deploy.

Cause

Each VIB in an image profile has a stateless-ready flag that indicates that the VIB is meant for use with vSphere Auto Deploy. You get the error if you attempt to write a vSphere Auto Deploy rule that uses an image profile in which one or more VIBs have that flag set to FALSE.

Note: You can use hosts provisioned with vSphere Auto Deploy that include VIBs that are not stateless ready without problems. However booting with an image profile that includes VIBs that are not stateless ready is treated like a fresh install. Each time you boot the host, you lose any configuration data that would otherwise be available across reboots for hosts provisioned with vSphere Auto Deploy.

Solution

1. Use vSphere ESXi Image Builder cmdlets in a vSphere PowerCLI session to view the VIBs in the image profile.
2. Remove any VIBs that are not stateless-ready.
3. Rerun the vSphere Auto Deploy cmdlet.