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The Host Profiles CLI Fling (hostprofilescli) is a command-line utility that allows vSphere administrators to perform several operations with Host Profiles that are either not currently possible through existing user interfaces, or possible only through graphical interfaces.

Recall that Host Profiles is a feature of VMware vSphere that allows identical configurations to be applied to multiple hosts. Customers typically use one profile per cluster, but depending on hardware and storage consistency, a single profile can be used more broadly.

This CLI utility can be used to perform the following operations:

• Customize Auto Deploy stateless hosts prior to booting and joining vCenter Server
• Import/Export Host Profile to or from local file
• Attach a profile to an existing cluster
• Set root password in a profile or configure a profile to use unique root passwords per host
• Configure system image cache setting (stateless, cached, or stateful install)
• List all host profiles in vCenter Server

Administrators of large VMware vSphere deployments who regularly deploy new clusters of VMware ESXi hosts can benefit from this additional automation for Auto Deploy and Host Profiles.

Overview of Capabilities

Pre-Customization of Auto Deploy Hosts

When using Host Profiles, most configuration settings apply equally to every host in a cluster, but certain items are unique to each individual node. These unique settings, such as a hostnames or static IP addresses, are known as customizations and are sometimes referred to as answer files. Administrators normally input these customizations with a graphical vSphere interface during the deployment process. vSphere 6.5 introduced a mechanism that allows editing customizations through a CSV file, but the feature only applies to hosts that have already been added to the vCenter Server inventory.

The stateless-template feature of this CLI utility allows administrators to pre-populate a vSphere cluster with all customizations applicable to the associated Host Profile so that VMware ESXi hosts can be fully configured and ready for use with zero manual intervention - without a GUI. The customization data, such as static IP addresses or unique root passwords, are specified using a standard CSV file. As such, this configuration data can be generated programmatically and tracked though version control mechanisms.

See the Instructions tab for more information on how to use this feature.

Host Profile Import and Export

The hostprofilescli utility can also be used to export a specific profile to a local file for backup or, in some cases, to move between test and production environments. Keep in mind that Host Profiles are very closely tied to specific hardware, I/O devices, and storage. Attempting to use a profile in another environment that is not virtually identical may require significant troubleshooting to become operational.

Examples:

hostprofilescli hostprofile --profile esxi65-nfs-gen8 export --file esxi65-nfs-gen8.vpf
hostprofilescli hostprofile --profile esxi65-nfs-gen8 import --file esxi65-nfs-gen8.vpf

(Examples on this page omit the authentication parameters for brevity.)

Root Credential Management

Host Profiles can be used to specify passwords for ESXi accounts. However, since passwords are not extracted from the reference host during profile creation, they must always be set by an administrator afterwards through the Host Profile editor. The hostprofilescli utility can be used to set the root password on a profile, eliminating the need to log in and use a vSphere GUI.

Alternatively, Host Profiles can be configured to prompt a user for host passwords during customization - useful if security standards require unique root passwords for each individual ESXi host. This utility can also enable such a configuration, and if it is selected then root passwords can be specified in the customization data through the stateless-template feature described above.

Examples:

hostprofilescli hostprofile --profile esxi65-nfs-gen8 useraccount-password set --type allhosts
hostprofilescli hostprofile --profile esxi65-nfs-gen8 useraccount-password set --type perhost

Attach Profile to Cluster

Once a Host Profile exists in vCenter Server, either by extracting from a host or uploading form a file, it can be attached to an existing cluster using the attach subcommand.

Example:

hostprofilescli hostprofile --profile esxi65-nfs-gen8 attach --entity dbcluster

System Image Cache Configuration

Although the most common deployment architecture for Auto Deploy is to use stateless, diskless VMware ESXi hosts, there are two other options: stateless caching and stateful installation. The hostprofilescli utility can also be used to modify this setting.

Stateless caching is used to mitigate potential performance degradation during boot storms, such as during recovery after a mass outage. With this configuration, hosts boot from a cached copy of ESXi on local storage if PXE or Auto Deploy services are not available. Important to note is that these hosts will boot and wait until Auto Deploy is available before they are re-connected to vCenter Server. Therefore, caching is not a high-availability architecture.

Stateful install is a means of using Auto Deploy to perform a traditional installation of ESXi to disk. After installation, the host is identical to hosts installed from ISO image and is no longer dependent on Auto Deploy. Choosing this option requires that physical hosts be configured to boot first from hard disk, not from network, after installation is complete.

Examples:

hostprofilescli hostprofile --profile esxi65-nfs-gen8 system-image host set \
--type stateful-install --firstdisk_arguments localesx,local --ignore_ssd --overwrite_vmfs

For more information on system image cache, see the product documentation:

hostprofilescli stateless-template export --cluster database --templateDir db \
> --vchostname vcsa22.vcritical.com --vcusername administrator@vcritical.com

hostprofilescli stateless-template import --cluster database \
--imageProfile ESXi-6.5.0-20170104001-no-tools \
--templateCSV db/esxi65-singlevswitch-static-nfs-template.csv \
--templateJSON db/esxi65-singlevswitch-static-nfs-template.json \
--vchostname vcsa22.vcritical.com --vcusername administrator@vcritical.com