in Virtualization 142 Words

Auto Deploy Stateful Won’t Install

Interesting problem we encountered on a recent project using Auto Deploy and stateful caching where the ESXi images just wouldn’t stick (i.e install) onto local disk. Using vCenter 6.5e and ESXi 6.5d, the auto deploy boot would work fine, however the install would not persist to local disk.

Seems it is a problem with the host profile being used for the Auto Deploy rule…so to workaround the issue what we did was create a seperate host profile just for the initial boot of the server with auto deploy (i.e. the host profile listed in the Auto Deploy rule), with everything unchecked in the profile except for “System Image Cache Configuration” as shown in the below image:

Stateful Install Host Profile

Once it was booted and added into vCenter, a seperate profile was then applied to configure the remaining VDS settings, Advanced Properties etc.

6 thoughts on “Auto Deploy Stateful Won’t Install”

    1. No current solution in 6.5d from what I could find. Workaround is to use a separate host profile just for the stateful install as I have described in this post. I am in the process now of testing 6.5 U1, I’ll see if this is fixed in 6.5 U1.

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  2. Did you ever get this to work?

    I am using VCSA 6.7U1, with a 6.5 U2 Image + 6.5 Host profile.
    The host profile, has nothing configured on it, except the system image cache configuration which points to USB install.
    I am trying to get the 6.5 U2 image to do stateful to USB stick. It does not work, no matter what I do to it.

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    1. I haven’t tested in a while…I’m currently on vacation but will spin it up in my lab when I return, to see if there are any changes…I’m currently running 6.7 U2

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  3. I tried in my own lab with 6.7U1 and 6.7U2, and both do usb stateful installs. I am just having trouble with 6.5 U2, even tried the latest 6.5U3, and I am still seeing the same issue, inability to do a stateful install to USB.

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  4. How did you get arguments details for stateful install? I am having same problem with auto deploy vsphere 7 through vcenter appliance. The auto deploy works but it is stateless install. I have 20GB VM hard disk yet it will not use the hard disk for vsphere 7 install.

    I will recreate a new host profile just like yours and see what happens.

    Thanks

    Ram

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