How to Provision a VMware ESXi server using foreman¶

Although puppet will not run under ESX server we can still use foreman to kickstart the server using PXE.

Summary of what you need to do:

1. Copy iso contents of ESXi to your media directory
2. Copy the esx boot files to your tftp directory
3. Create a ESX operating system in foreman
4. Create a ESX partition table (optional) template
5. Create a ESX kickstart template in foreman
6. Create a ESX pxe or gpxe template for ESX in foreman

Copy iso contents of ESXi to your media directory (example only)

mount -o loop esxi-iso-file.iso /mnt/iso1  (example for RHEL based distros)
rsync -avz /mnt/iso1/ /var/www/html/repos/vmware/esxi4.1/

Copy the esx boot files to your tftp directory

cp /var/www/html/repos/vmware/esxi4.1/mboot.c32 /var/lib/tftpboot/boot/vmware/
cp /var/www/html/repos/vmware/esxi4.1/vmkboot.gz /var/lib/tftpboot/boot/vmware/
cp /var/www/html/repos/vmware/esxi4.1/vmkernel.gz /var/lib/tftpboot/boot/vmware/
cp /var/www/html/repos/vmware/esxi4.1/sys.vgz /var/lib/tftpboot/boot/vmware/
cp /var/www/html/repos/vmware/esxi4.1/cim.vgz /var/lib/tftpboot/boot/vmware/
cp /var/www/html/repos/vmware/esxi4.1/ienviron.vgz /var/lib/tftpboot/boot/vmware/
cp /var/www/html/repos/vmware/esxi4.1/install.vgz /var/lib/tftpboot/boot/vmware/