The way I do it, if in a hurry, is create 1 VM with the necessary software (eg Windows Server 2008 r2) ... Make sure everything is configured correctly like you would with creating a template in vCenter.
Then open sysprep (run > sysprep) Choose OOBE, generalize and shutdown (leave it in the inventory of the ESXi host) ... Then I use converter to create virtual machines from that "template".
Once you have that "template" it's just a matter of running through the converter "wizard" and deploying the VM's, starting them and letting them do their initial setup again.