To take advantage of this deployment method, it is essential to understand how Auto Deploy works and what steps and services are involved during the ESXi deployment process. Different components interact with vSphere Auto Deploy when a fresh host boots:

The ESXi booting process through Auto Deploy feature involves the following different steps:

1. When the server first boots, the host starts a PXE boot sequence. The DHCP server provides an IP address giving instructions to the host on how to contact the TFTP server (DHCP configuration will be discussed later).
2. When the host establishes the connection with the TFTP server, it downloads the iPXE file (executable boot loader) named undionly.kpxe.vmw-hardwired and an iPXE configuration file.
3. During the iPXE execution, the host makes a HTTP boot request to the vSphere Auto Deploy server (this info is stored in the iPXE configuration file) to get hardware and network information.
4. The vSphere Auto Deploy server consequently queries the rules engine for information about the host and streams the components specified in the image profile, the host profile, and optional vCenter Server location information.
5. At this stage, the host boots using the image profile assigned. If a host profile has been specified, it is applied to the host.
6. The host is added to the same vCenter with which Auto Deploy is registered. If the inventory location is not specified by any rule, the host is added to the first data center displayed in the vSphere Web Client UI.
7. If the host is part of a Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) cluster, only when it has been added to the vCenter Server can VM from other hosts be migrated to the host.