Test new or modified rules for compliance and repair accordingly, as changes in the vSphere Auto Deploy rule set are not updated automatically.

Prerequisites

When you add a rule to the vSphere Auto Deploy rule set or modify one or more rules, hosts are not updated automatically. vSphere Auto Deploy applies the new rules only when you test their rule compliance and perform remediation.
  • Prepare your system and install the Auto Deploy Server. For more information, see Prepare Your System for vSphere Auto Deploy.
  • Verify that your infrastructure includes one or more ESXi hosts provisioned with vSphere Auto Deploy, and that the host on which you installed PowerCLI can access those ESXi hosts.

Procedure

  1. 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_or_ipv6_address
    The cmdlet might return a server certificate warning. In a production environment, make sure no server certificate warnings result. In a development environment, you can ignore the warning.
  2. Use PowerCLI to check which vSphere Auto Deploy rules are currently available.
    Get-DeployRule
    The system returns the rules and the associated items and patterns.
  3. Modify one of the available rules.

    For example, you can change the image profile and the name of the rule.

    Copy-DeployRule -DeployRule testrule -ReplaceItem MyNewProfile 
    			 
    You cannot edit a rule already added to the active rule set. Instead, you can copy the rule and replace the item or pattern you want to change.
  4. Verify that you can access the host for which you want to test rule set compliance.
    Get-VMHost -Name MyEsxi42
  5. Run the cmdlet that tests rule set compliance for the host, and bind the return value to a variable for later use.
    $tr = Test-DeployRuleSetCompliance MyEsxi42
  6. Examine the differences between the contents of the rule set and configuration of the host.
    $tr.itemlist
    If the host for which you want to test the new rule set compliance is compliant with the active rule set, the system returns a table of current and expected items.
    CurrentItem                             ExpectedItem
    -----------                             ------------   
    My Profile 25                           MyNewProfile
    
  7. Remediate the host to use the revised rule set the next time you boot the host.
    Repair-DeployRuleSetCompliance $tr

What to do next

If the rule you changed specified the inventory location, the change takes effect when you repair compliance. For all other changes, reboot your host to have vSphere Auto Deploy apply the new rule and to achieve compliance between the rule set and the host.