Hello,
I'm a Network Engineer, so forgive my ignorance of what might be some basic VMware concepts.
In my company, we're deploying VMWare Auto Deploy. I've read this document:http://labs.vmware.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/autodeploy_fling.pdf
...which suggests it is perfectly valid to deploy a single VMWare Auto Deploy server to serve ESXi hosts, regardless of the vCenter affiliation of the ESXi hosts. However, that document pertains to version 4.X and in my company the deployment is based on 5.1 Auto Deploy, which appears a little bit different.
I'm posting here to make sure I understand these concepts to make the best design decisions from an IP networking and DHCP perspective.
My question:
In 5.1, (a) MUST the Auto Deploy daemon be running on vCenter and (b) can the Auto Deploy deamon serve only ESXi hosts being managed by the vCenter on which it is running? I'm asking because if this strict dependency exists, our networking group needs to create multiple DHCP pools, each pointing to a different bootfile on potentially different TFTP servers.
Stated another way:
In 5.1 Auto Deploy, is there a way to setup a centralized Auto Deploy infrastructure that can be leveraged by all ESXi hosts regardless of their vCenter affiliation? Or, in 5.1 Auto Deploy, if I want all my ESXi hosts which are currently managed by about 10 vCenters, must I install Auto Deploy on every vCenter host?
I could very well be misunderstanding something about the Auto Deploy conceptually so if so I'll ask an even broader question to obviate any assumption I've made or misunderstanding I have.
Is there a way to deploy Auto Deploy 5.1 across multiple vCenters and their associated ESXi host such that I only have to create one DHCP profile and one network to serve the PXE boot needs of all ESXi hosts?
Thanks,