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Last week I told you about the features of the ESX Deployment appliance today I’m going to show you how to setup the appliance in oder to start installing your VMware vSphere servers automatically.

Basically the steps I’m going to describe are:

• Configure ip settings of the appliance
• Configure DHCP
• Mount the OS image
• Import PXE files

After you have finished the download of the appliance from the download site of the EDA and imported it to an existing VMware ESX Server or VMware Workstation we must first power up the appliance.

Then we must scroll down and enter in Reconfigure

Having hard times to deploy several VMware vSphere ESX Servers? after intallation customizations takes days for each new host?. Think I can help you a little bit here.

Last week have been working with ESX Deployment Appliance which is a virtual appliance that provides an easy to use application to deploy VMware vSphere ESX/ESXi servers through PXE.

This small appliance will allow us to:

• Install VMware ESX/ESXi 3.x/4.x hosts
• Define virtual network settings
• Define license server parameters
• Enable VMotion
• Configure NTP
• Add a banner
• Add local users
• Get remote files
• Define hosts file
• Enable SSH root Access
• Plus much more

Basically we need to poweron the virtual appliance, set the correct ip settings and mount an ISO file of VMware ESX/ESXi on its virtual cdrom. Then create a new profile for the ESX host with all the parameters.

The error:

A general system error occurred: The VMotion failed because the ESX hosts were not able to connect over the VMotion network.  Please check your VMotion network settings and physical network configuration.

Happens when your vmkernel port cannot connect to the vmkernel port on the remote Vsphere ESX host. In order to correct this you’ll have to ensure that your tcp-ip network settings are correctly defined and you can use the command vmkping with root privileges:

Sometimes the option to press F2 to access a virtual machine BIOS on VMware ESX4 passes to fast infront of your eyes. If you need to access the BIOS and can’t press F2 fast enough there is another way to access it. Basically you need to select the virtual machine and then press the “Edit Settings” button.

Then go to the Options tab/Boot Options and select “the next time the virtual machine boots…”

VMware released the ThinApp Architecture Reference in order to provide customers evaluating the solution with  information about design and architecture:

The documents available are:

• VMware ThinApp Reference Architecture 
• VMware ThinApp Information Guide - Streaming Execution Mode VMware  
• VMware ThinApp Deployment Guide 
• xpnet Performance Review of AppVirt Solutions 
• VMware ThinApp 4 Reviewer’s Guide