In about 2-3 weeks time I will be receiving 24 new blades across 3 new chassis. Each blade consists of 4x E5-4640, 1.5TB RAM, 200GB SSD SAS, and 2x 2GB SD cards.
My idea is to use the SD cards to install ESXi 5.5 U2, and maybe use the SSD for some sort of caching if possible (we use FC storage), but my main concern is how to best deploy 24 new hosts.
In the past I've only had to install 2,3,4, maybe 5 hosts at once so doing the install and config manually wasn't been a huge deal. I also have a script that I can use to copy the configuration (vswitches, time, etc) from one host to another but I'd still have to manually install ESXi on each host.
I'm aware of Auto Deploy but have never used it and know nothing about PowerCLI.
That said I'm not against trying to learn it in a short time but want to make sure I'm not over looking other possible solutions.
What are your thoughts about this?
My idea is to use the SD cards to install ESXi 5.5 U2, and maybe use the SSD for some sort of caching if possible (we use FC storage), but my main concern is how to best deploy 24 new hosts.
In the past I've only had to install 2,3,4, maybe 5 hosts at once so doing the install and config manually wasn't been a huge deal. I also have a script that I can use to copy the configuration (vswitches, time, etc) from one host to another but I'd still have to manually install ESXi on each host.
I'm aware of Auto Deploy but have never used it and know nothing about PowerCLI.
That said I'm not against trying to learn it in a short time but want to make sure I'm not over looking other possible solutions.
What are your thoughts about this?