Please check out this post in VMware forum.

ESX delay startup/recovery from power failure

http://communities.vmware.com/message/736049#736049

Below are some answers from this post.

Using the iLO/Director/DRAC interfaces and expect it will be possible to script the boot of all your systems. So that you could say have one server that boots which is independent of the SAN or anything else. It talks to the SAN periodically to say hey are you ready... When it is ready, it scripts the boot of the ESX servers.

The option I use is a series of APC Switched PDUs that are all ethernet controlled. On a power out, my servers are set to reboot when power comes back on, but I have the PDUs set so that the power does not come on for a set amount of time, anywhere from  15sec to 5 minutes. If I need longer,  I set the PDU to never restart the power port and have another script that queries, waits until the SAN is up and then using Expect and a little bit of Perl Scripting login to the PDU and automatically power on the servers.

Either method is possible. Some are easier than others. Some tools have delays built into them, but they are not always long enough.

In normal DC operation, the boot up sequence should be from backend to frontend, Server should be powered up after SAN and Storage.

Would look into ESXi boot setting to see anything helpful.

Eddy

Jingyi, your finding is a way leveraging DC PDU system and hardware remote controller to customizer boot sequence of equipment in DC.

I think Rafa could look for a customization of ESXi boot menu, VMvisor, which has counter down clock before starting ESXi.

Eddy

Here is another solution:

Using PowerCLI to rescan HBA and VMFS in a cluster http://thephuck.com/virtualization/using-powercli-to-rescan-hba-and-vmfs-in-a-cluster/