Introduction

Initially, automation doesn't save time. To get the benefits of automation, you must invest the time upfront to create scripts that you'll use time and again. In this chapter, you'll take your first ESXi host that has been installed with an IP address configured on it, and you will configure the server continually from there. This chapter will take an administrator through the basic configuration tasks needed to perform the initial configuration, join them to vCenter, and get it into an operational state. At the end of this chapter, all of these steps will build into a scripted configuration that can be executed against new hosts in the future.