After all our hard work in last week’s article, we can now finally start with the fun part: configuring VC and reinstalling our ESX servers!

Launching VI Client for the first time and create your empire!

1) Start the VI Client and taste the smell of a new cleanly installed VC Database.
2) The wizard will take you trough the process but the steps in short are:
- Create Datacenter
- Create Cluster
- Create a Folder structure
- Add the hosts to VC

Now as you can see, VC detects your "zombified" ESX server and is happy to import all your VM’s into its new database. (all your VM’s are belong to us!)
Just add all your 3.0.x ESX hosts except the 1 host you already cleared in step 2 of the first article.

ESX 3.5 (semi-) Automatic Installation

3) I then manually re-installed my first ESX server which doesn’t take to much time except for the partitioning.

The prospect of doing this a few more times by hand didn’t sit well with me because it is easy to make a mistake when you are working in a server room that is so cold, your crown jewels will fall off if you stay in 1 place too long! 
Since there wasn’t any time to go all-out with the EDA for example, I decided to take the quick and dirty road with the ks.cfg file.
(which I think is perfect for environments that have up to about 8 or 9 ESX servers)
I didn’t remember this being heavily discussed during my ESX 3 training, luckily I found the information in the installation guide.

4) First enable scripted installation on the installed ESX 3.5 server

5) Start scripting your ESX install

 
Remember that it depends on your hardware what you should use as drive in the partitioning scheme. In our hardware, the disk shows up as SDA so that’s what I used.
6) Now you have a basic ks.cfg file you can edit with a text editor (like Ultraedit) don’t use notepad because it will mess up the format of the file. I then googled for some additional info. This site was most helpful (thanks Shannon!).
Because I’m a bit of a control-freak( I want to manually assign which NIC goes where etc.), I used only a small portion of that script which had me ending up with a script you can download here
(I’ve put quotes around stuff you need to edit for easy reference!)

7) Now that you have customized the script to your needs,(remember you can make the script as complex as you want to, I had a clock running and don’t mind some hard work so I kept it simple),  
It’s time to put this magic to work:
- Put the ks.cfg on a floppy and the ESX cd in the drive.
- VMotion all VM’s off your next ESX server,disconnect the host from VC and reboot the server.
- I removed the SAN cables from the HBA’s (I leave this step up to you)
- When you see the bootscreen of ESX setup enter the command:
esx ks=floppy and watch the setup go off on a tear..!!!
This way you can reinstall your ESX hosts in about 10-15 minutes! (I then manually assign the NICS, enable VMotion and NTP)
Just keep your VM’s hopping from one ESX to the other until all your hosts are done. (*NOTE Make sure to first upgrade your ESX Hosts with the latest patches before vmotioning your vm’s to it. Read part III for more information on configuring update manager)

The keep the article readable, I’ll stop here and in the final part we can round up some things that didn’t make it to part II.
Hope to see you then…
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