VMware VS4-ENT-PL-A - vSphere Enterprise Plus Setup Manual page 186

vSphere Installation and Setup
7 If you selected Enable stateless caching on the host, specify information about the disk to use.
Option
Arguments for first disk
Check to overwrite any VMFS
volumes on the selected disk
8 Click Finish to complete the host profile configuration.
9 Apply the host profile with the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere PowerCLI.
Option
vSphere Web Client
vSphere PowerCLI
Enable Stateful Installs for Hosts Provisioned with Auto Deploy
You can set up hosts provisioned with Auto Deploy to cache the image to disk and to use the cached image
on subsequent boots. After the image is cached, the hosts act like hosts on which an image is installed.
Prepare Hosts Provisioned with Auto Deploy for Stateful Installs
In some situations, it is useful to provision hosts with Auto Deploy and to perform all subsequent boots
from disk. This approach is called Stateful Installs.
Prerequisites
Decide which disk to use for storing the image, and determine whether the new image will overwrite an
existing VMFS partition.
Procedure
1 Set up your environment for Auto Deploy and install PowerCLI.
See "Preparing for vSphere Auto Deploy,"
2 Verify that a disk with at least 1GB of free space is available.
If the disk is not partitioned, partitioning happens when you apply the host profile.
3 Set up the host to boot from disk.
See your hardware vendor's documentation.
Configure a Host Profile to Enable Stateful Installs
To set up a host provisioned with Auto Deploy to boot from disk, you must configure a host profile. You
can apply that host profile to other hosts that you want to set up for stateful installs.
You can configure the host profile on a single host. You can also create a host profile on a reference host and
apply that host profile to other hosts.
186
Description
By default, the system attempts to replace an existing ESXi installation, and
then attempts to write to the local disk.
You can use the Arguments for first disk field to specify a comma-
separated list of disks to use, in order of preference. You can specify more
than one disk. Use esx for the first disk with ESX installed on it, use model
and vendor information, or specify the name of the vmkernel device
driver. For example, to have the system first look for a disk with the model
name ST3120814A, second for any disk that uses the mptsas driver, and
third for the local disk, specify ST3120814A,mptsas,local as the value of
this field.
If you click this check box, the system overwrites existing VMFS volumes if
not enough space is available to store the image, image profile, and host
profile.
Description
Use the host profiles interface of the vSphere Web Client. See the Host
Profiles documentation.
See "Assign a Host Profile to Hosts,"
on page 167.
on page 174.
VMware, Inc.