Auto Deploy Best Practices

This section discusses several Auto Deploy best practices. See the VMware Knowledge Base for additional best practice information.

Auto Deploy and vSphere HA Best Practices

You can improve the availability of the virtual machines running on hosts provisioned with Auto Deploy by following best practices.

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For hosts that can be part of a vSphere cluster, follow these steps.

Enable vSphere HA on the cluster.

Include the vmware-fdm VIB in the image profile that you want to use.

Use PowerCLI to write a rule that assigns that image profile to the target hosts.

If the image profile does not include the vmware-fdm VIB, a warning message appears on the PowerCLI console when you run the New-DeployRule or Copy-DeployRule cmdlet. The message includes information on how to add the VIB. See vmware-fdm Warning Message When You Assign an Image Profile to Auto Deploy Host.

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Some environments configure the hosts provisioned with Auto Deploy with a distributed switch or configure virtual machines running on the hosts with Auto Start Manager. In those environments, deploy the vCenter Server system so that its availability matches the availability of the Auto Deploy server. Several approaches are possible.

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Deploy the vCenter Server system and the Auto Deploy server on the same system. This approach is especially well suited for a proof of concept environment.

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Deploy vCenter Server Heartbeat.

VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat delivers high availability for VMware vCenter Server, protecting the virtual and cloud infrastructure from application, configuration, operating system, or hardware related outages.

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Deploy the vCenter Server system in a virtual machine. Run the vCenter Server virtual machine in a vSphere HA enabled cluster and configure the virtual machine with a vSphere HA restart priority of high. Include two or more hosts in the cluster that are not managed by Auto Deploy and pin the vCenter Server virtual machine to these hosts by using a rule (vSphere HA DRS required VM to host rule). You can set up the rule and then disable DRS if you do not wish to use DRS in the cluster. The greater the number of hosts that are not managed by Auto Deploy the greater your resilience to host failures.

Note

This approach is not suitable if you use Auto Start Manager because Auto Start Manager is not supported in a cluster enabled for vSphere HA.

Auto Deploy Networking Best Practices

Prevent networking problems by following Auto Deploy networking best practices.

IP Address Allocation

Using DHCP reservations is highly recommended for address allocation. Fixed IP addresses are supported by the answer file mechanism, but providing input for each host is cumbersome and not recommended.

VLAN Considerations

Using Auto Deploy in environments that do not use VLANs is highly recommended. Do not use VLAN tagged networks at the boot NIC.

If you intend to use Auto Deploy in an environment that uses VLANs, you must make sure that the hosts you want to provision can reach the DHCP server. How hosts are assigned to a VLAN depends on the setup at your site. The VLAN ID might be assigned by the switch or by the router, or you might be able to set the VLAN ID in the host's BIOS or through the host profile. Contact your network administrator to determine the steps for allowing hosts to reach the DHCP server.

Auto Deploy and VMware Tools Best Practices

See the VMware Knowledge Base for Auto Deploy and VMware Tools best practices.

Auto Deploy Load Management Best Practice

Simultaneously booting large numbers of hosts places a significant load on the Auto Deploy server. Because Auto Deploy is a web server at its core, you can use existing web server scaling technologies to help distribute the load. For example, one or more caching reverse proxies can be used with Auto Deploy to serve up the static files that make up the majority of an ESXi boot image. Configure the reverse proxy to cache static content and pass requests through to the Auto Deploy server.

Configure the hosts to boot off the reverse proxy by modifying the TFTP tramp file. When you click Download TFTP ZIP in the vSphere Client, the system downloads the ZIP file that contains the tramp file. See Prepare Your System and Install the Auto Deploy Server. Change the URLs in that file to refer to the address of the reverse proxy.

After a massive power outage, VMware recommends that you bring up the hosts on a per-cluster basis. If you bring up multiple clusters simultaneously, the Auto Deploy server might experience CPU bottlenecks. All hosts come up after a potential delay. The bottleneck is less severe if you set up the reverse proxy.

vSphere Auto Deploy Logging and Troubleshooting Best Practices

To resolve problems you encounter with vSphere Auto Deploy, use the Auto Deploy logging information from the vSphere Client and set up your environment to send logging information and core dumps to remote hosts.

Auto Deploy Logs

1	From a vSphere Client, connect to the vCenter Server system that Auto Deploy is associated with.
2	When the Certificate warning appears, select the check box, click Ignore and repeat if a second warning appears.
3	In the vSphere Client, click Home. An Auto Deploy icon is included in the display.
4	Click the Auto Deploy icon to display the Auto Deploy page.
5	In the Auto Deploy page, click Download AutoDeploy Log Files.

Setting Up Syslog

Set up a remote Syslog server. See the vCenter Server and Host Management documentation for Syslog server configuration information. Configure the first host you boot to use the remote syslog server and apply that host's host profile to all other target hosts. Optionally, install and use the vSphere Syslog Collector, a vCenter Server support tool that provides a unified architecture for system logging and enables network logging and combining of logs from multiple hosts.

Setting Up ESXi Dump Collector

Hosts provisioned with Auto Deploy do not have a local disk to store core dumps on. Install ESXi Dump Collector and set up your first host so all core dumps are directed to ESXi Dump Collector, and apply the host profile from that host to all other hosts. See Configure ESXi Dump Collector with ESXCLI and Set Up ESXi Dump Collector from the Host Profiles Interface.

Using Auto Deploy in a Production Environment

When you move from a proof of concept setup to a production environment, take care to make the environment resilient.

■	Protect the Auto Deploy server. Auto Deploy and vSphere HA Best Practices gives an overview of the options you have.
■	Protect all other servers in your environment including the DHCP server and the TFTP server.
■	Follow VMware security guidelines, including those outlined in Auto Deploy Security Considerations.