How do you deploy your ESX servers?

There are a number of ways to deploy/install ESX; RDP/PXE, from CD, remote ISO boot etc.

What's your favourite method and why?

kickstart with pxe. That's also the direction you'll get directed to in their training courses. For the install it's little more than a redhat install with some extras, so kickstart is the way to do it. This makes more sense when you're building a cluster and want identical installs.

One at a time. From CD.

I like this method, because the only person I can blame is myself. I have an install document that was created when the first server was deployed. Do it once, double check, do it right.

Of course ... I only have 4.

Scaling beyond this mere handful, I would probably start with PXE. Deploying over the network is much easier and reliable than doing it by hand.