Caution: Articles written for technical not grammatical accuracy, If poor grammar offends you proceed with caution ;-)
I have been asked this question a few times so I thought it would be wise to post an article on it. When deploying an automated build script with the kickstart and/or installation files located on http, ftp, or nfs there are network configuration dependencies that you need to be aware of.
The ESX installer is a modified version of anaconda which is the same installer used for RedHat and a few or Linux variants. Anaconda is what allows for the kickstart portion of the automated build script. Anaconda itself has some limitations as far as what it supports.
Anaconda does not support 802.1q VLAN tagging. If you plan on tagging the service console network traffic this will affect your kickstart installation. The anaconda installer will not tag the vlan id to the traffic and therefor will not be able to perform the installation. You have a few options on how to handle this.
- Don’t have the networking folks tag the vlan until after the install finished. However this can cause problems if your post installation script needs to grab some files from across the network so be aware of what you are doing during your post installation.
- Use a dedicated deployment network. If you use this option take a look at my ESX 3.x Deployment script #2 located on our download page.
- Don’t tag the service console traffic. If you share vSwitch0 with both the vmkernel(vMotion) interface and the service console only tag the vmkernel traffic. This still allows for isolation of the traffic. Have your network guys set the service console vlan as the native(untagged)vlan.
- Create a custom installation CD with all the necessary files located on the CD.