IP allocation with Auto-Deploy host profiles

kalthak

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Aug 7, 2006
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I am looking for suggestions on the best way to handle IP addressing for hosts that are auto-deployed. For small deployments I have been fine with hand-jamming the addresses for the vmknics to bring the auto-deployed hosts out of maintenance mode. But looking at much larger deployments I am not sure what is the best way to handle it?

I have thought about DHCP for all vmk networks, and while this seems like it could work out, something I want to avoid is having a bunch of hosts showing up as disconnected under the cluster just because they have rebooted and received new dhcp addresses. Any suggestions are appreciated. Just for the record I have vmks for mgmt, nfs, and vmotion x2 backed by 2x10gig physical nics.
 
Having issues posting right now, so I apologize if this is a double post...

I am looking for suggestions on the best way to handle IP addressing for hosts that are auto-deployed. For small deployments I have been fine with hand-jamming the addresses for the vmknics to bring the auto-deployed hosts out of maintenance mode. But looking at much larger deployments I am not sure what is the best way to handle it?

I have thought about DHCP for all vmk networks, and while this seems like it could work out, something I want to avoid is having a bunch of hosts showing up as disconnected under the cluster just because they have rebooted and received new dhcp addresses. Any suggestions are appreciated. Just for the record I have vmks for mgmt, nfs, and vmotion x2 backed by 2x10gig physical nics.
 
DHCP with static assignment? That would solve your issues with getting a new DHCP address after reboot. Use DHCP on the network but when you deploy a new host just set it static in the DHCP server.
 
dhcp with static assignment, hostd.conf, answer files (the best answer), etc. Lots of different ways to do it.
 
I'm using dhcp reservations for the mgmt interface, and then manually generating the host customization after first boot when I bring the host out of maintenance mode. I guess this is what VMware is calling answer files?

Is there a better way to create these answer files? I'm not sure how I'd do static assignments for the other vmk interfaces since I don't know what their assigned macs will be.
 
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