Hi All 
...
In the seventeenth part of our series, we'll go through vSphere Host Profiles. Host Profiles is an advanced feature in vSphere 5.x which creates a customization profile from a reference host that can be edited and modified and to be applied to newly fresh-installed ESXi hosts to apply all the settings and configuration on the reference host. Most of the configurations are applied automatically and some require user input which is done by using Answer File. It’s similar to Unattended Installation of a reference Windows image in which you also use answer file to answer some required inputs.
Now, Let's Start...
1. vSphere 5.5 Host Profiles Features:
This official document by VMware describes in details all features of vSphere 5.5 Host Profiles, how to create and how to apply them. Unfortunately, they removed the section about using Host Profiles through vSphere Client and kept only the section of Web Client:
For using Host Profiles through vSphere Client, you can use the Host Profiles document of vSphere 5.1:
2. Host Profiles Known Issues and Troubleshooting:
For Host Profiles issues and troubleshooting, I gathered the below articles. First one is a KB article from VMware regarding some alerts appears during compliance check regarding hosts datastores configuration:
The second one is also a KB article for swapping vmk ports order or for disconnecting hosts using vSphere Standard or Distributed Switch while applying Host Profiles configurations. When applying Host Profile Network configuration, sometimes the host gets disconnected when changing the portgroup to which management vmk port is connected. Following this KB, it can solve this issue. It appears in vSphere 5.1, but don’t know about vSphere 5.5 (confirmation needed):
Last one is an article by CNP Technologies Pages on Spiceworks.com which summarizes Host Profiles and contains some useful troubleshooting KB articles from VMware:
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/305984-vmware-support-insider-some-tips-for-host-profiles
Share the knowledge ....
Previous: vSphere 5.x Notes & Tips - Part XVI: