Automated ESXi Network Based Build

Then you need to provide an KickStart file for the ESXi installer and a way to tell the PXELinux environment to use that to build the ESXi server.

The KickStart file will be ESXi host specific, it’s content and syntax is documented in the ESXi install guide, below is a very simple one that I am using for one of my hosts:

vmaccepteula
install url http://192.168.6.2/ESXi_4_1u1
rootpw vmware
autopart –firstdisk –overwritevmfs
network –bootproto=static –ip=192.168.6.11 –hostname=esx1.lab.local –netmask=255.255.255.0 –gateway=192.168.6.10 –nameserver=192.168.6.2 –addvmportgroup=0 –device=vmnic0
reboot

The “install url” line should point to your build repository and the “network” line should contain the required settings for your ESXi server’s management network.  Note that at install time only one physical NIC will be used, we’ll add some commands to fix that later in the process.  It would also be better to use an encrypted password in the “rootpw” line rather than manually change the password to a complex one later however I haven’t found a good method to generate the password crypt on windows.

Once the file is created save it in a location on your build repository using a naming standard that makes sense to you.  In my lab I place the KickStart file in the ESXi version repository folder, the same location that the “install url” line points to and I save it as the ESXi server’s hostname with a .cfg extension, in this case “C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\ESXi_4_1u1\esx1.cfg”

Now that we have a KickStart file we need to tell the installer to use this file, that is a simple matter of a “ks=” directive in the PXE config file.  The directive must go immediately after the “vmkboot.gz” directive, as shown below.

Now any computer that PXE boots will be immediately rebuilt as ESXi server esx1.  That may not be quite what we want, especially if we have a number of ESXi servers on this network, so we’d better make the automated build physical server specific.  Luckily PXELinux doesn’t just use the “default” configuration and will first look for a variety of other file names.  The simplest method is to have a host specific configuration file that is named for the MAC address of the physical server which uses the ESXi host specific KickStart files.  This allows a series of ESX server specific PXE config files each of which builds a specific ESXi server automatically when the ESXi PXE boots.  In my lab the host “esx1” has a MAC address of “01:00:0c:29:9b:69:54”on it’s first NIC so it’s PXE config file is named “01-00-0c-29-9b-69-54” and lives in the  “C:\TFTPRoot\pxelinux.cfg” folder.  I have also changed the “default” file so that it causes any unknown PXE client to boot from it’s local drive rather than rebuild as an ESXi host, the new default  file is shown below:

I haven’t cleaned up the boot screen as it’s not displayed for long enough, it will still show a menu of one item for a second.

The build process is:

Reboot server, press <F12> for PXE Boot

DHCP server returns boot server and pxelinux.0

pxelinux.0 loads via TFTP and looks for a config file via TFTP

MAC address named config file points to ESXi installer and ks file

ESXi installer loads from TFTP

ESXi installer reads ks file from web server

ks file directs installer to web server for install image

ESXi installer loads install image from web server and completes install

For each ESXi host you will be building you will require a separate KickStart file and PXELinux file.  In the PXELinux file the “ks=” directive needs to point to a different kickstart file, which in turn has  a different IP address and hostname.  

We now have an environment where a series of ESXi hosts can be automatically rebuilt by rebooting them and pressing <F12> to trigger network boot.  Two files are created for each ESXi host, a new host is accommodated by copying and a minimal amount of changes to those two files.  Of course at present we need to choose to PXE boot the host when we want to rebuild it, normally it will boot from it’s local hard disk.