Questions about how FOG is Working
-
Hi there,
I study informatics here in germany
i would like to talk about FOG in a semester Work. I used to work with Fog a time ago.Can please somewone explain me how fog is doing
Hardware/Software inventory ( i think there is no software inventory)
software deployment
unattend installationi know for the unattend i need a prepared Image and the Software deployment works with some kind of plungins
but how is the Hardware inventory working? is there a PXE image loaded? And whats inside?thanks a lot
Wolle
-
@langerwo said in Questions about how FOG is Working:
Hardware/Software inventory ( i think there is no software inventory)
Hardware inventory is done either through the registration process of a new computer, or via the fog client service that gets installed in your golden image prior to capture. There is no software inventory. If you need this kind of information then you need to use a third party tool like PDQ Inventory, OCS, Spiceworks Desktop, etc.
software deployment
Software deployment is done by creating what FOG calls snap-in packages. These are deployment packages picked up by the FOG client service running on the deployed computers. Or you can use a tool like PDQ Deploy
unattend installation
This is a function of your target system OS. FOG does’t care about OOBE or kickstart operations of the target OS. If you are talking about MS Window, then you will need to build a golden image, sysprep it, capture with FOG and then deploy with FOG.
i know for the unattend i need a prepared Image and the Software deployment works with some kind of plungins
Again if we are talking about MS Windows, you need to build your golden image in Audit mode, or use Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) to create your golden image with all of the windows updates and applications installed. There is no fog plugin to do this, FOG is an image cloning tool.
but how is the Hardware inventory working? is there a PXE image loaded? And whats inside?
FOG uses the PXE process to transfer the FOS (Fog Operating System) to the target computer to capture and deploy images. FOS is a highly customized linux operating system built specifically for image capture and deploying withing the FOG environment.
-
There is no Software inventory.
Hardware inventory is performed either through the deployment/capture process of a registered machine, or via a dedicated Inventory from the FOG GUI. @george1421 the FOG Client does not perform “hardware inventory” in the level of telling a user what information the machine has. It simply registers an unregistered machine and allows the admins to approve/disapprove machines in a semi-autonomous methodology. (Not that I think you were saying otherwise, just wanted to make sure the information was more clear.)
Software deployment is not the “strong” element of what FOG does. We do have snapins which could potentially be used to install software, but snapins, in and of themselves, are not really a “software deployment utility”. This would be better suited for some other programs out there. Neither is it a patch management system. Again, you could use snapins to do these things, but this was not what snapins were designed for.
Unattended installation is managed particularly by how you want to manage the installation process. FOG, as @george1421 stated, doesn’t care what “state” your reference machine is in. It only captures the current state of the hard drive in a block level format. I would, personally, recommend using Sysprep (in the case of Windows) to generalize the machine before capture. This will allow you the ability to create what we call a “hardware independent” image. This, however, is not a requirement and FOG will happily capture your disk in any state you feel is sufficient for your needs.
Hardware inventory works just like an imaging task in fog works. (At least if you’re meaning what I think you’re meaning.) You create a task (deploy, capture, or inventory). FOG Uses PXE to load the machine from the network. This passes to a bootfile called iPXE. IPXE then handles checking for the task, and if there is one found booting the machine into the FOS (FOG Operation System) to perform the task. This data is stored in the FOG MySQL database linked to the registered host’s identifier.
Hopefully this helps. @george1421 already stated most of this, but I figured I could potentially help a little too!
