Hi,
Just getting started off on this - I have a small setup where I have some FreeBSD images created as VMs on ESXi 5.5 and am using vSphere as the client.
Below are the objectives I am trying to acieve :
[1] Bring up 5 VMs with the FreeBSD image I have, with some baseline configuration for example: management IP assigned and ssh enabled.
[2] Currently, I have manually mapped the vSwitches containg the vnics to the physical nics on the ESXi server from which there are outgoing connections to external routers
For [2] I believe I can write a perl/python script that uses the esxcli interface to automate the same.
- Is there a better way to do this ?
For [1] however, I am not clear on how to accomplish this.
- Can a VM template help with this ?
- Is there a way by which I can combine a baseline config file with the vmdk image and then boot the VM up using the same ?
- How would virtual appliances fit into this picture ?
Would appreciate any input you would have on the above.
Thanks.
