I'm hoping to answer a few questions users might have about having a master image location with replication to other servers/sites. Also, I hope to transfer some of my Linux knowledge over to all those users out there running a Linux PXE boot! BooYA! Anyway, you don't have to run a Linux PXE boot to understand the concepts in this article, simple modify my Linux scripting to DOS.
This might be a little confusing so let me explain the situation.
Our company went from one main office to two separate offices 40 miles from each other. I then needed to find a solution to remotely deploy images to both sites without dual Deployment Servers (I'm a one man show so I didn't want the administrative responsibility of two deployment servers). Currently we are in a Linux PXE environment pushing down Windows XP hardware independent images. The first thing I did was order a second server to the other site. The main (master) server would hold the master HII images where I would upload updated ones. Then, once a night, the server would replicate the HII images to the second side (slave file server). I then needed to find a way to deploy the images so that I could drop a computer onto a single job and it would determine which site it was at and pull from its file server and not from the other sites file server. Now that you have the background, let's put it into practice.
Automated Image Replication:
First step is the automated image replication from the mater to the slave file servers. To do this, I used the trusty Notification Server.
The first step is to set the secondary server as a package server. After that, I created a Software Delivery package.
These are the settings I used to the package.
Then, I created a task to run the Software delivery package after hours.
Mount drives for PXE
The next step in the process is to create mount points in your boot disk so that PXE can see both servers for the image files.
In your deployment console, open the PXE Configuration Utility
Click the edit button on the Boot image you want to add the mount points too.
Select Edit Boot Image
Scroll through the settings till you are able to find the 7th option where you may add mount points. Here you simple add the UNC paths to where your images are on each server. Please ensure you have those locations shared and have tested the UNC paths.
Not so complex is it! Now it's time for the final step...
Build DS Jobs
Now we will need to create a single job that will determine where the computer is at, and where it should pull its image from. This is the job that I created... Here you will see Linux code, all you need to do for DOS PXE boots is use DOS commands to do the mounting and checking.
Here is the first run script that will determine where to pull its image from...
#! /bin/bash
LONGIPADDR=%AGENTIPADDR%
IPADDR=${LONGIPADDR:3:2}
case "$IPADDR" in
'10')
/bin/ln -s /mnt/dsimages /mnt/img
echo "Pulling image from Bend PXE Server" > /dev/tty1
;;
'11')
/bin/ln -s /mnt/images /mnt/img
echo "Pulling image from Prineville PXE Server" > /dev/tty1
;;
'12')
/bin/ln -s /mnt/images /mnt/img
echo "Pulling image from Prineville PXE Server" > /dev/tty1
;;
esac
exit 0
What this script is doing is checking the 2rd octet of the IP address and based on that number, it will determine which drive and server to mount for the deployment job. We can do this in our environment because all PC's within the main location have an IP address of 10.10.x.x and every PC in the second office has 10.11.x.x or 10.12.x.x
Now that we have this script created, we can create our deploy image job. Here is what this looks like.
This is now using that generic mount that will determine where the image is located. That generic mount gets assigned in the script to the specific mount pointing to one of the servers. Make sure the disabled image path validation is check also.
This completes the instruction set on how we can automate the pull of images from their location.
If you have any questions, you can find me in the Altiris Chat room almost daily. You can reach this chat room by going through the Juice Page. You must be logged into the Juice Page to see the link on the right hand column. Good luck everybody!