Introduction

ESXi Image Builder is used to custom-build ESXi bootable images. There are several use cases, but the most prominent one is the server hardware vendor using ESXi Image Builder to custom package their drivers along with the ESXi image. Image Builder is, in fact, used to create ESXi image profiles, which can then be exported as ISO images containing bootable ESXi images. We will learn more about image profiles later on in this chapter. With the previous vSphere versions, all the Image Builder actions were performed using its PowerCLI plugin. Starting with vSphere 6.5, VMware introduced a vSphere Web Client GUI making it much easier to use the Image Builder service. In this chapter, we will learn to use image profiles using both GUI and the CLI.

vSphere ESXi Image Builder...