Deployment Solution

We've recently moved our server imaging process to DS 7.1 and Workflow. Our reference images were all built on VMWare servers hosted on an ESX host. The images all deploying and working as expected.  

I am now trying to add Blade servers as an available device to image in our Workflow. So far, I've added the proper preboot drivers and am able to deploy a Ghost image to a Blade BL460c Gen 8 and to work with the machine in automation. However, the Blade fails to properly boot after the image has been deployed. It boots to a 0x0000007b Disk Error/Blue Screen.

From what I've gathered, the most likely culprit here is that the required storage and storage controller drivers are missing from the reference image. As a result, the machine is unable to locate any disks from which to boot. I've tried capturing and injecting the CriticalDeviceDrivers key from a properly functioning Blade (with only an out of box OS image and required 3rd party drivers installed) into the registry of the freshly imaged Blade while in automation, but have not had any luck getting it to boot. My last option is to create Blade images for each production OS that we might use, but I am trying to avoid having more reference images to manage. Has anyone had any luck deploying a hardware independent image that was not created on a Blade to their Blade servers? We're working strictly with Server 2008 images at present.

Thanks!

Hello,

Have you tried adding critical drivers to DeployAnywhere database & then selecting 'DeployAnywhere' option in deploy image task?

Thanks,
Sachin

Sachin,

Deploy Anywhere is not an option for us. We're using a custom tokenized sysprep file that contains computer name, domain and OU tokens that are created by our workflow. The last time we tested Deploy Anywhere, we realized that it overwrites our custom sysprep file. Has that been changed?

Thanks,

Mike

Sachin,

I've added the drivers to the DeployAnywhere DB. When I run a scan in eval mode, the drivers are not detected. Here's the output.

Mike

Missing critical driver detected :