To support vSphere Auto Deploy, the DHCP server has to be configured accordingly. First, we have to define basic settings to configure a DHCP scope including the default gateway. If you want to assign a specific IP address to the host to be better identified, you can use DHCP reservation to accomplish this.

When the necessary settings are ready, you need to specify two additional options:

• Option 66: In this option, you should specify the Boot Server Host Name to be used by the system.
• Option 67: The Bootfile Name must be specified. The filename undionly.kpxe.vmw-hardwired can be found in the Auto Deploy configuration tab in the BIOS DHCP File Name field.

If VLANs are used in your vSphere Auto Deploy environment, make sure you set up end-to-end networking correctly because, during the host PXE booting, the firmware driver has to tag the frames with proper VLAN IDs. Changes must be set manually in the UEFI/BIOS interface. If you are running a Windows-based environment, the easiest way is to install a DHCP server role.

Once the DHCP server role is installed, you need to configure desired options.

At the least, you need to configure your new DHCP scope (IP Address Range for DHCP clients) and Option 66 and Option 67.

If the vCenter Server is not on the same L2 network, you also need to configure Option 003 – Default Gateway for your DHCP client, and preferably DNS servers using Option 006: