After creating a host profile from a reference host, you can create a rule that applies the previously verified image profile and the host profile that you extracted to target hosts from a specific IP range.

Procedure

  1. Log in with administrator privileges to the console of the Windows system, either directly or by using RDP.
  2. In a PowerCLI session, run the Connect-VIServer cmdlet to connect to the vCenter Server system that vSphere Auto Deploy is registered with. 
    Connect-VIServer ipv4_address
    The cmdlet might return a server certificate warning. In a production environment, make sure no server certificate issues occur. In a development environment, you can ignore the warning.
  3. Run Add-EsxSoftwareDepot to add the online depot to the PowerCLI session. 
    Add-EsxSoftwareDepot https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

    Adding the software depot is required each time you start a new PowerCLI session.

  4. (Required) Display the rules in the active rule set by running the Get-DeployRuleset cmdlet.
  5. Create a rule that instructs vSphere Auto Deploy to provision the set of hosts from a specified IP range with the image profile that you previously selected and the host profile that you created from the reference host. 
    New-DeployRule -name "Production01Rule" -item "image_profile",ESXiGold -Pattern "ipv4=IP_range"
  6. Add the new rule to the active rule set. 
    Add-DeployRule	-DeployRule "Production01Rule"
  7. Check the active rule set by running the Get-DeployRuleset command.
    PowerCLI displays information similar to the following example. 
    Name:              Production01Rule
PatternList:       {ipv4=address_range}
ItemList:          {ESXi-version-XXXXXX-standard, Compute01, ESXiGold}

What to do next

Provision the hosts and set up the host customizations.