Does MaaS support deploying ESXi?

Question

I saw this post that is over a year old: MaaS automated provisioning of ESXi

Has there been any change? Is ESXi a supported OS or on the roadmap to be supported?

Answer 1

MAAS supports managing virtual machines in an ESXi, but the moment it does not allow deploying a machine with ESXi.

Answer 2

You can deploy ESXi via PXEboot with kickstart to customise the install. You will need:

• Syslinux 3.86 (4.x and newer will fail with ESXi)

• Kickstart script, include at least the commands below

  accepteula
install --firstdisk --overwritevmfs
rootpw vmware123
reboot

• You can follow this with %pre --interpreter=busybox (to setup hostname and network config) and %firstboot --interpreter=busybox sections in the Kickstart file to customise the install.
• Kernel boot command as shown below, pointing to kickstart script (on http?)

DEFAULT esxi6
PROMPT 0
MENU TITLE PXE Boot
LABEL esxi6
MENU LABEL ^4) ESXi6
KERNEL repos/ESXi-6.0.0/mboot.c32
APPEND -c repos/ESXi-6.0.0/boot.cfg text gdbPort=none logPort=none ks=http://my-server.local/ks.cfg
LABEL hddboot
LOCALBOOT 0x80
MENU LABEL ^Boot from local disk

• Copy of the installation ISO image with edited boot.cfg to ensure that all the paths are relative to the TFTP root. sed -e "s#/##g" -e "3s#^#prefix=repos/`basename $PWD`/\n#" -i.bak boot.cfg

Standard Linux tools are neater and easier to maintain than most vendor-provided solutions.

For PXElinux config see here: https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp#com.vmware.vsphere.install.doc_50/GUID-5B132E25-0CFC-40D0-993D-40A83981E0E5.html

For install commands see here: https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2004582

Answer 3

Starting with 2.5.0 MAAS can officially supports ESXi. Take a look at https://discourse.maas.io/t/maas-2-5-0-final-released/261