Deploying VMware ESXi
After you've established the basics of your vSphere design, you must decide exactly how you will deploy ESXi. You have three options:
- Interactive installation of ESXi
- Unattended (scripted) installation of ESXi
- Automated provisioning of ESXi
Of these, the simplest is an interactive installation of ESXi. The most complex—but perhaps the most powerful, depending on your needs and your environment—is automated provisioning of ESXi. In the following sections, we describe all three of these methods for deploying ESXi in your environment.
Let's start with the simplest method first: interactively installing ESXi.
Installing VMware ESXi Interactively
VMware has done a great job of making the interactive installation of ESXi as simple and straightforward as possible. It takes just minutes to install, so let's walk through the process.
Perform the following steps to interactively install ESXi:
- Ensure that your server hardware is configured to...
