Deployment Solution

I have purchased Altiris Deployment Solution for Servers to aid the installation of Windows 2003 on a number of servers.
I have installed the first server how I want it.
I have installed the Deployment Server and PXE Server on another Windows 2003 Server.
I have deployed the Altiris Agent to the new server I have built and it has registered itself with the Deployment server.
If I right click on the computer in the Deployment Console and select Quick  Disk Image, while the computer is switch on and booted to Windows the following happens

The computer reboots
The job displays "booting to automation"
The computer does a PXE Boot
The job displays "RDepoy: The operation was cancelled"
The computer reboots back to Windows

If i try right clicking on the computer in the Deployment Console and select Quick Disk Image while the computer is switched off the following happens

The job displays "Sending wake on lan"
The computer powers on
Does a PXE Boot
The job displays "Restarting computer to prepare for imaging"
The computer restarts
Bypasses PXE Boot
Boots to Windows
Job displays "Sending wake on lan"
Once windows has loaded the Altiris SID Replacement service runs
The computer reboots once the SID replacement task has finished
Does a PXE Boot to Automation
The job displays "Restarting computer to prepare for imaging"
The computer reboots
Boots to windows
The job displays "Sending wake on lan"
reboots again
PXE Boot to Automation
The job displays "Restarting computer to prepare for imaging"

and then stays in this loop of booting to automation and then "restarting to prepare for imaging", booting to windows and then back to automation.

Any idea what is wrong or can you point me in the right directory to resolve this issue?

Hi,

Your problem either lies in the PXE boot process, or within the automation environment. To narrow down, can you detail what happens when your server PXE boots. For example, is it getting as far as downloading your preconfigured DOS/Linux/WinPE image? If not, you need to configure your PXE Boot environment from within the "PXE Configuration Utility"

If automation is successfully downloading, check that the account you've used in the automation environment has full permissions on the express share folders  eXpress\Images, eXpress\Temp, eXpress\LOG.

Kind Regards,
Ian./

Couple of questions to clarify your environment further...

1. Are you dealing with the same server hardware for all your servers or do you intend to support a number of different hardware platforms?

2. Do you have an image to deploy to your test server or is this still "work in progress" ??

3. What server hardware are you testing on? Does it have a RAID array, for example, and if so, what chipset is providing the RAID services?

4. Have you integrated the hard disk drivers into the WinPE boot process (I'm making an assumption here) ?  If you have a Marvell chipset, for example, that is providing your RAID support, then the native WinPE driver support will not recognise this chip and will not be able to access your hard disks in order to lay down an image.

The WinPE environment loads.  I see that it maps a drive to the images share and can access the local disks.

Where can I check the account used in the automation environment?  I do not remember configuruing this.

All server hardware is exactly the same.

I am attempting to take an image at the moment not deploy an image.

Server hardware is IBM System x 3650 M2, yes it has a ServeRAID MR10i

 If you go into the PXE configuration Utility you'll be able to drill-down and edit the WInPE image in Bootdisk creator. Once in the wizard, you'll be able to view the username being used to map the express share. As the express share can be mapped, the username password combination is fine, so you just need to check that this account has full access to the images, temp and log folders.