Setting up the right FOG Environment

[Wayne Workman]

@tomcatkzn said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

Could you offer the reasons why you prefer Centos over Ubuntu?

There’s this: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10006/ubuntu-is-fog-s-enemy

[Sebastian Roth]

@TomcatKZN While talking about the “right FOG environment” you might also consider the network part. PXE boot and multicast are mainly the things that cause issues for FOG users. Possibly you have this all ready as you use WDS right now. Just came to my mind and though I better mention it to be worth consideration.

[TomcatKZN]

@sebastian-roth said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

@TomcatKZN While talking about the “right FOG environment” you might also consider the network part. PXE boot and multicast are mainly the things that cause issues for FOG users. Possibly you have this all ready as you use WDS right now. Just came to my mind and though I better mention it to be worth consideration.

Thank you. PXE boot is working great. Had some issues with multicast as the labs are on different subnets. Any pointers will be appreciated.
Have 2x Netgear 7328FS backbone switches.
Each dept has its own Netgear GS724T or GS748T switch.

[TomcatKZN]

@wayne-workman said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

@tomcatkzn said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

Could you offer the reasons why you prefer Centos over Ubuntu?

There’s this: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/10006/ubuntu-is-fog-s-enemy

Thank you for pointing this out. Def going with Centos.

[TomcatKZN]

@george1421 said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

@tomcatkzn said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

I was thinking that I need for each operating system/hardware combination :

A base image with drivers and updates but no other software
then a pre-sysprepped image of each of the above with other software installed.
then a final sysprepped image for deployment.

In our case we have a generic OS image and then use FOG to place the required diver files in a predefined location on the target system during imaging. Granted we only use Dells in our company, but we have 3 images (Win7x64, Win10x64, Win10x64EFI) for 15 different hardware models. It takes a while to set this up, but we can add new models without needing to recapture images for each new model. Also with this design, we recapture these 3 images each quarter with the latest updates (we may abandon this since Win10 will change the way updates are applied anyway).

We build our reference images on a VM so that we have capabilities like snapshotting, and hardware independence during reference system creation. We do use Microsoft MDT to automate our reference image build. That way we get a consistently built reference image each quarter.

Thank you for the feedback. I was lead to believe that using a VM for the reference image was not a good idea according to an article by Mitch Tullock (the link escapes me at the moment), although we are currently doing it with MDT/WDS.

Can you elaborate on how you: “use FOG to place the required diver files in a predefined location on the target system during imaging.”

[TomcatKZN]

@george1421 said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

@tomcatkzn said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

Any idea what the size of a basic win7 and win10 image is with the new compression code?

We’ve been rolling out fat images lately, but I think our thin Win7 image is about 8GB on the target disk.

When setting up the VM I would create 2 vmdk files. One for the OS and one for images. If you are comfortable with the linux installer you can do it when you manually partition the disk. Create an OS disk of about 20GB in size and then create the image disk as a single disk, with a standard partition (not lvm) formated with ext4. Then for your mount point make it /images. That way when you install fog everything is setup.

The other option is to install linux first on that single 20GB disk and then after the OS is installed then add in the imaging disk and mount it to /images BEFORE fog is installed. Again you will want to make it a single vmdk, with a standard partition (not lvm) formatted with ext4. The reason why I say a standard partition is that if you need to you can expand that vmdk later and then the partition, and file system. Its a bit harder if lvm is involved.

Thank you for this very helpful feedback.
So a vhdx of about a 250Gb for /Images should be a good starting point then.

[george1421]

@tomcatkzn said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

Can you elaborate on how you: “use FOG to place the required diver files in a predefined location on the target system during imaging.”

Sure…
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7740/the-magical-mystical-fog-post-download-script
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7391/deploying-a-single-golden-image-to-different-hardware-with-fog
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/4278/utilizing-postscripts-rename-joindomain-drivers-snapins

IMO building your reference image on a VM is the only proper way to build your reference image. I would dislike doing what I do on a real system, it would really slow down our workflow with building new reference images.

[george1421]

@tomcatkzn said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

So a vhdx of about a 250Gb for /Images should be a good starting point then.

Yes that is a good size since you need storage for 30 computer images.

[TomcatKZN]

@george1421 Awesome! Thank you.

[Sebastian Roth]

@tomcatkzn said in Setting up the right FOG Environment:

Had some issues with multicast as the labs are on different subnets. Any pointers will be appreciated.
Have 2x Netgear 7328FS backbone switches.
Each dept has its own Netgear GS724T or GS748T switch.

Well, I have never had one of these in use and therefore can’t give specific advise. Probably best if you just give it a go and post a new question in the forums when you hit the wall with that.

[george1421]

@sebastian-roth The issue is (only guessing here), that the OP needs to setup a multicast router, or on their vlan router allow multicast data to pass through the router. Most routers have this disabled by default. One other thing is to have IGMP Snooping enabled on the switches so that the switches know who is a IGMP subscriber and who doesn’t care about the data stream (i.e. PIM Sparse Mode vs Dense Mode).

[TomcatKZN]

@george1421
That is gold. Thank you.