MAC-Independent Provisioning Overview

MAC-Independent Provisioning, also known as "MAC-Indy", "Pull Provisioning" or "On-the-fly Provisioning" is an interactive provisioning mode in which the user selects what to operating system ("Provisioning Role") to install from the client system’s keyboard after the system does a network boot ("netboot" or "PXE boot").

Data centers and other environments where the IT staff rarely touches physical systems are best provisioned using MAC-Specific Provisioning.

Click on MAC-Independent Provisioning and you will first be presented with the following screen (which has no roles on it because you just installed LBMP and haven’t yet added any MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles):

MAC-Indy_menu_empty_arrow_on_menu_button

Note that until you create a MAC-Independent Provisioning Role, the default for client systems that boot from the network is to be redirected to boot from their local hard disk.

After you have have created MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles, you will be presented with the list of Provisioning Roles (each containing an operating system and optionally additional applications and post-installation scripts) that you (the LBMP Administrator) have prepared and that will be selected from by the person on the client system from the PXE (Pre-boot eXecution Environment) screen when a system boots to the network.

MAC-Indy_Dashboard_75

There is a one-to-one correspondence between the MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles Setup page (above) and the screen that will appear on the display of the client system that made a network boot request (below):

MAC-Indy_Client_100

Note: this screen will not appear on a client system if either a MAC-Specific Provisioning Role or a MAC-Specific Imaging Profile already exists for for the client system, since its MAC address is known to LBMP.

When the client system boots to the network, the user will select an item from a list (or if a default was set by the LBMP Administrator, it will be installed starting in 60 seconds if no selection is made) as shown above.

Enable/Disable MAC-Independent Provisioning

Before provisioning systems using MAC-Indy provisioning, be sure to enable the feature by clicking on the button shown below.

Before:

MAC-Indy_prov_disabled

After:

MAC-Indy_prov_enabled

Changing MAC-Independent Client Host Name, Password and other Parameters

When you install LBMP, MAC-Independent Roles values for host name and other parameters are automatically embedded in the control files for each operating system. All provisioned systems will have the same assigned values and will be assigned dynamic IP addresses by your existing (non-LBMP) authoritative DHCP server.

The defaults are:

Client host name: pxeprovisioned

Client domain name: pxebaremetal

Client time zone: GMT

Client root password: unsecure

To regenerate the control files with values of your choosing, run the script setup.pl. All changes you have made to the files will be lost, so back them up first, then after regenerating the control files, cut and paste into the new files the changes you had made previously):

# cd /home/tftpboot/bin

# perl setup.pl

................................................................................

LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning Setup Menu

Version: LBMP -6.1.2-1.

If you want to change your existing LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning settings, select from

the options below:

3: Network setup

4: Disk Image Snapshot and Restore storage directory setup

5: Create control files for MAC-Independent provisioning

6: Install or update license key file

7: Restart the LinMin services and Exit LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning Setup

8: Do Not restart the LinMin services just Exit

Please make a selection:5

You will then be prompted to change the values. When done, enter 7 to restart the LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning services and exit the script.

MAC-Independent Tips

On the MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles page, enter the keystroke (numbers and/or letters) to be associated with the menu item and the name (menu item text) that will be shown on the MAC-Independent Provisioning Menu.

The kernel parameters field has other uses as well. For example, if the target machine has multiple Ethernet interfaces then the kernel should be passed the correct provisioning interface via the parameter "ksdevice" e.g. "ksdevice=eth1", where you want to provision over eth1 and not eth0.

LinMin has provided you with at least 1 control file per supported distro or OS. You may wish to edit this control file to have fewer or more packages installed and to change other characteristics of the systems being provisioned. If you make such changes, please change the file name to something other than what LinMin provided, and back these control files up. Should you change your networking address (e.g., the IP address of the LinMin Server) and use the “setup.pl” program, the URL in each control file delivered by LinMin will be updated and your changes will be lost if did not rename the control file.

Arrange the MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles for display

When you have created menu items, the MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles page will display the menu items.

Arrange the order in which the boot menu will display the items by using the arrows to the right of the Make Default buttons.

When you select a “key” (keystroke to be pressed by the user on the client system to provision a certain distro or OS) and you move items up and down, the numbers will be out of order. If you wish to change numbers, please make sure you don’t use an already assigned number. You may also use alphanumeric character strings (with no spaces) instead of single numbers or letters.

Help url: http://www.linmin.com/help/index.html?provisioning_overview_mac_independent_provisioning.html

MAC-Independent Provisioning Overview						Dear LinMin-Support,
MAC-Independent Provisioning Overview