How to deploy Windows Nano Server (TP5) on vSphere

With the upcoming release of Windows Server 2016 Microsoft will introduce a new edition of its flagship Operating System: Windows Nano Server is a super lightweight version of Windows Server that was "built for the Cloud". When I first heard of it I immediately became curious, because it resembles VMware's ESXi in many ways: It is an embedded-like and headless system with a very small footprint and can be managed only remotely. It has limited use cases, but two of them are acting as a fully-featured Hyper-V virtualization host and as a container host.

When looking for a good way to deploy Nano Server on vSphere I found some guides, but they were all referring to older Tech Preview (TP) versions of Server 2016 (things have changed in the current TP5) and/or did not result in optimal state-of-the art configurations. So I decided to write up my own guide, and here it is ...