I’m currently doing a POC of vSphere 5’s Auto Deploy in an attempt to streamline/perfect my knowledge of all the PowerCLI commands and steps in preparation for a client delivery. I’ve built a whole test environment on my laptop in VMware Workstation following pretty much all the steps detailed in these three postings:

• http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/08/25/using-vsphere-5-auto-deploy-in-your-home-lab/
• http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.install.doc_50/GUID-A9FFEDEE-1A3D-4EFD-A130-F6E78C727380.html
• http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/09/05/cheat-sheet-auto-deploy/

After setting everything up and adding my image profile to the deploy rule, I kept getting an error whenever my ESXi hosts tried to get the “undionly.kpxe.vmw-hardwired” file from my TFTP server as shown in the screenshot below

After trying everything from rebuilding Auto Deploy to re-creating the whole AD and the TFTP server I decided to try change my networking from Host Only to another setting in the hope this would do something and for reasons i’m actually unsure of at the moment it worked .

Changing the setting from Host Only to a Custom VMnet2 on all my VM’s hosting my vCenter Server come Auto Deploy Server come TFTP server and all my ESXi hosts allowed the communication to let the ESXi servers get the “undionly.kpxe.vmw-hardwired” file and thereby allow all my stateless hosts to now boot perfectly. Now to finish off all my Auto Deploy Testing

Gregg