Hi all,
My question for you:
How do I deploy VMs at install?
The hypothetical environment:
I have a standalone server that will be on a space station orbiting Earth. As part of the Disaster Recovery plan, I need to give the user a quick and simple (from their point of view) way to completely re-install ESXi (8.0.3) along with two VMs onto a fresh server. (I already have a working KS file that will allow me to automate the install of ESXi and apply all required settings - Attachment KS-BC.txt)
The Constraints:
- The server is standalone, there is no internet connectivity onboard the space station.
- There is no external management position available. The user has the server, a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor, and some USB sticks.
- Everything is done through the console/terminal/ESXCLI
While on Earth, I have access to a management position:
I can do the following step by step:
- Take .OVF exports of the VMs that I want to use
- Use OVFTOOLS to convert the .OVF into .VMX & .VMDK etc.
- Split the files that are over 4GB (due to constraints of ESXi 8 reading NTFS/FAT32) onto a USB
- Stop usbarbitrator and identify the mpx path of the USB
- Copy the files onto the datastore
- Cat the files back together on the server
- Register and power on the VM
Steps 1, 2, & 3 are run on my management position.
What I would like, is to have steps 4, 5, 6, & 7 to run as part of the KS process. (See Attachment - Steps_to_implement.txt for code to achieve adding first VM).
I was experimenting with %post yesterday but nothing (not even simple things like echo "Hello, World!" > tty3) would run, and anything more complicated (like renaming the datastore) would error out. Weird. Is %post the way to go about this, do you think?
Please help!
Mik3