Sean Crookston

I have been working in the lab trying to get some hands on time with all of the new features of vSphere 5. Currently on the block is Autodeploy. There are a lot of great resources out there for Autodeploy already and I’ll include some links below. The main purpose however of this entry is to expose an issue I found when using Cisco DHCP scopes. I’ll follow up with saying that most of my experience in DHCP is with Microsoft AD.

When trying to enable options 66 and 67 I could not connect to the PXE Server  I received the DHCP address but could not get connected to the TFTP server. The message I received back was PXE-E32 TFTP Open Timeout.

I banged my head against a wall for a bit checking configs, making sure the tftp service was running and making sure I wasn’t missing anything obvious. In a last ditch effort something I read alluded to the below commands that could be used in lieu of option 66 and option 67. After configuring the below for the scope it worked immediately.

next-server 192.168.1.44 

bootfile undionly.kpxe.vmw-hardwired  

Autodeploy Links

https://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/vsphere/VMware-vSphere-Evaluation-Guide-4-Auto-Deploy.pdf

http://kendrickcoleman.com/index.php?/Tech-Blog/using-vmware-autodeploy-for-esxi.html

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/08/25/using-vsphere-5-auto-deploy-in-your-home-lab/

http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/vsphere-5-auto-deploy-pxe-booting-through-cisco-asa-firewall/

http://ntpro.nl/blog/archives/1819-vSphere-5-Auto-Deploy-Demo.html

• vSphere 5 for the SMB