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: