Preparing vSphere environment – create host profile, configure the deploy rules and activate them

Thus far, we have ensured that auto deploy services are enabled, and the environmental setup is complete in terms of DHCP configuration and TFTP configuration. Next, we will need to prepare the vSphere environment to associate the appropriate ESXi image to the servers that are booting in the network. In this recipe, we will walk through the final steps of configuring auto deploy by creating a software depot with the correct image, then we will create auto deploy  rules and activate them.

How to do it...

The following procedure prepares the vSphere environment to work with auto deploy:

1. Log in to vCenter Server.
2. Navigate to Home | Host Profiles as shown here:
   
3. Click on Extract Profile from host as shown:       
   
4. Choose a reference host based on which new hosts can be deployed and click on Finish:
   
5. Navigate to Home | Auto Deploy.
6. Click on Software Depots | Import Software Depot, provide a suitable name...