Now that we have the offline bundle downloaded, there is a series of procedures to prepare vSphere Auto Deploy server for stateless provisioning of the ESXi hosts. Most of the procedures are done using vSphere PowerCLI, except for the creation of the host profile which should be done at the vCenter Server where Auto Deployed ESXi host will eventually be added.
The following flowchart depicts the sequence of the procedures involved:
Once we have the offline bundle downloaded on the VMware PowerCLI machine, the next step is to present the offline bundle to the vSphere PowerCLI session. It is a requirement that the offline bundle should be accessible on the machine where PowerCLI is installed. vSphere PowerCLI refers to an offline bundle as a software depot.