In this lab you learn about the time savings and benefits of standardizing server deployments using the new and improved Altiris Deployment Solution for Dell Servers 2.0. Check out the slide presentation, it's the next best thing to being there.
During the live demonstration, a Dell PowerEdge 1955 Blade Server was fully provisioned from bare metal, including the automatic configuration of the BIOS, BMC, and RAID hardware components all leveraging the bundled Dell Tool Kit (DTK). The 32MB Dell Utility Partition used for hardware diagnostic troubleshooting was then deployed followed by the deployment of a hardware independent Windows Server 2003 image. Finally, scripted installs of Dell OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA), SQL Server 2005, and the Altiris Deployment Solution and Notification Server agents were remotely deployed - all from one single drag-and-drop Deployment Server job!
The PowerEdge 1955 Blade Server hardware was forcibly failed by removing one of the SAS drives throwing a critical alert to the Monitor Solution for Dell Servers 6.1 dashboard. Remediation was then initiated by drilling down on the triggered rules reports and launching the performance monitor for an EKG style playback of the server's hardware monitoring history.
Another PowerEdge 1955 Blade Server was forcibly failed by ripping the Blade out of it's slot from the chassis and replaced with another unmanaged Blade Server only to recover using Deployment Solution's native rip-and-replace change management functionality.
Finally, Patch Management for Dell Servers 6.2 was demonstrated to show how Dell Server hardware firmware can remain up to date even after the initial bare metal provisioning process with set-it-and-forget-it policy based distributions.
View the Presentation here.