As a follow-on to my post Deploying ESX3.5 using EDA v0.85 inside VMware Workstation 6.5 i have decided to document the steps i took to deploy an ESX 3.5 host using the new version of EDA, v0.87.

The actual software versions i used are;

• VMware Workstation 6.5.2 build-156735
• EDA v0.87 Note: Not the patched version
• VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3 build-123630

There is quite a big difference in how the EDA v0.87 VM is created to how it was created using EDA v0.85, so I have documented my steps below.

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VMware Workstation is becoming a very good friend of mine since I installed it a few months ago, it makes testing soo much easier and quicker which pleases my boss as I’m not installing and uninstalling software on Production VM’s.

My interest in deploying ESX using EDA (ESX Deployment Application) came about when I received a new project which was to create a new ESX cluster with 6 hosts. I know 6 hosts isn’t a lot but I wasn’t sure whether it would have been quicker for me to manually install the ESX hosts one by one or to setup a scripted install which would install them all automatically for me.

If any of you listen to the VMware Communities Roundtable Podcasts you may remember a discussion that was had in Episode #32 about “How many ESX Servers do you have to install before automation is really worth it?” The discussion was inconclusive so I decided that I was going to install my new host manually, but as part of my own development I download EDA to see what functionality was on offer.

This is not a step-by-step guide; it just provides you with the settings I used and the solutions to problems i found when setting up my Test deployment environment.

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A funny thing happened whilst configuring a new ESX3.5 cluster, part of my process was to enable HA on my hosts.

After checking the “Enable VMware HA” box and making a few changes to the default settings my Hosts begin to Configure HA.

All seemed to be going well until I was presented with this;

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I’ll set the scene a little….

I’m working late, I’ve just installed Update Manager and I‘m going to run my first updates. Like all new systems, I’m not always confident so I decided “Out of hours” would be the best time to try.

I hit “Remediate” on my first Host then sat back, cup of tea in hand and watch to see what happens….The Host’s VM’s were slowly migrated off 2 at a time onto other Hosts.

“It’s gonna be a long night” I thought to myself. So whilst I was going through my Hosts one at time, I also fired up Google and tried to find out if there was anyway I could speed up the VMotion process. There didn’t seem to be any article or blog posts (that I could find) about improving VMotion Performance so I created a new Servicedesk Job for myself to investigate this further.

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