Client Management Suite

Background

We cannot use FSR the easy way, i.e. build an ISO, burn it, and boot from it, because the CDROMs in our workstations show up as USB CDROMs and booting from USB CDROM is not supported. We tried creating bootable thumb drives but had no luck with that either so we turned to PXE. After much trial, error, and assistance from support it is working. There were a lot of manual steps once this was working so I set about making a couple small changes and writing a powershell script to take care of the bulk of the manual processes. I hope you find it helpful.

Acknowledgements:

KB Article 18934 - This is the original document describing how to set this up. I have streamlined the process slightly and so edited the document to reflect those changes. By and large it is the same.

KB Article 22901 - This applies to Dell clients, and maybe others, but was necessary for success.

Attachments:

pxe fsr.doc - Instructions for creating the PXE FSR boot menu option in DS. This only needs to be done once.

fsr.ps1.txt - This is the powershell script which does the work after the PXE boot menu option is working. This should be renamed to fsr.ps1.

Assumptions/Pitfalls/Shortcomings:

1. Folder location - The script assumes there is a folder named FSR on the root of the C drive of the server where the FSR ISO images reside. The script can be edited to accommodate a different location if necessary.
2. 7-zip - The script uses 7-zip to unzip the ISOs. 7-zip does not support extracting via UNC path so I run the script from the server. This reduces the number of places 7-zip has to be installed. The script could be modified to use a different zip engine as long as the engine has command-line options and supports ISO files.
3. Windows path - 7-zip needs to be added to the windows path in order for the powershell script to be able to call the engine and unzip
4. Powershell - This must be installed to run a powershell script.
5. Powerhshell code signing disabled - The script is not signed. To disabled the code signing requirement run "set-policyexecution remotesigned" within powershell. This is more secure than turning it off altogether. Alternatively you can sign the script and not disable code signing.
6. Testing has shown that computers need to be restored from a subnet with access to the recovery server. Running the FSR process to the point that the computer tries to connect to the recovery server and then taking it to the location where it can communicate with the recovery server does not seem to work. Milage may vary but that is our experience.

Methodology: (high level and not necessarily in any order)

1. Create a folder called FSR on the root of C on the server which will store the ISO images.
2. Copy fsr.ps1 to c:\fsr
3. Share the FSR folder as FSR.
4. Install 7-zip on the server.
5. Create a shortcut called "FSR Prep Utility" with a command-line of "C:\WINDOWS\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe c:\fsr\fsr.ps1" to make running the script easier. Putting it on the All Users desktop makes it still easier to find.
6. Follow the directions in pxe fsr.doc to create the necessary PXE boot menu option.

Usage:

1. Create a FSR ISO via the FSR Wizard. The path for the ISO should be \\server\fsr. Add the files in article 22901 if necessary.
2. Login to the server where the ISO was placed in step 1.
3. Double click the FSR Prep Utility shortcut to launch the UI.
4. The UI is simply a drop down list of all the ISOs, with paths in case there are multiple clusters, in the c:\fsr folder. Choose the computer you wish to restore from the drop down list and click the "Prep FSR" button. The script does all the unzipping and modifies the restore.dat file to insert the appropriate line. A pop-up will appear saying the process has finished. The utility can be closed at this point.
5. Boot to PXE, choose the boot menu option created when following the directions in pxe fsr.doc, and follow the prompts/instructions. Mostly this means pressing F10 to start the restore.