Installing FOG for a School
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Greetings,
I am not the most tech savvy person (our IT professional was let go because of budget).
Anyways, we are trying to setup Fog. Currently, we have an Ubuntu Server as the host OS. What we are trying to do is install FOG as a Virtual Machine and Server 2008 as a Virtual Machine on the host machine. Currently, our router is providing DHCP.
Some questions I have initially:
- Which device should provide DHCP? The Server 2008? Should DHCP should be turned off on the router?
As of right now, the only machine up-and-running is the Ubuntu Server with virtualbox installed.
I apologize if this has been posted elsewhere. This project fell in my lap and trying to do the best I can. Thanks for the help.
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Personally I would have 2008 provide DHCP and i would not have that running on 2008 in a vbox machine for a school network
Tell us more about your schools complete setup, what equipment do you have?
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Right now, we are just running about 50 desktops with no DC and the router providing DHCP.
The server I am trying to build is a Dell SC1425 with 2x Dual-Core and 2x 1TB Hard Drives in RAID1 running Ubuntu Server 12.04 64-Bit. It has a total of 16GB of RAM.
We just purchase about 40 HP T5730 to swap out the old desktops. The plan is to create a Windows Domain with FOG doing what it does best.
As of right now, nothing is setup other than the Ubuntu host OS. We do not have any other machines that could be installed with Server 2008, which brought me to the idea of installing as a VM.
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right, whats on this ubuntu server at the moment?
and can you have downtime?
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Nothing is running on the server (VirtualBox is installed, but no VMs).
I can have downtime everyday between 3-5pm
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okay here’s what I would do, (note I am not sure how in-depth to go with the instructions for you but this is a very very basic outline and i’m not fully sure of your needs/what you have/and what you could possibly acquire)
- install Windows 2008 (is it r2?) on to the dell server
- set static ip, gateway set as router lan address
- make it a domain controller
- enable dhcp, dns
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- config basic gpo set, create a directory to use as profile storage and directory to use as user home drive
- join machines to domain
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I use FOG in my school, it’s saved us many hours and has been running almost perfectly since I installed it. (Some new laptops are a pain)
If you have Active Directory already you can make fog join the machines to that domain.
If you don’t have Active Directory (Some Primary Schools don’t…) then just make sure everything is setup how it needs to be before deploying.You’ll need to control your DHCP to add the PXE boot options
Also make sure you don’t set too many slots on your server, things slow down to a crawl if your server can’t keep up with the data it is sending.If your not that experienced with servers/Linux then it might be wise to get someone in who knows how school IT systems work and can do things for you. if you do something wrong with fog you could end up doing a lot of hours fixing things with images and end up with people who can’t use computers for a while.
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Ok. After realizing that the SC1425s cannot do virtualization, I have since moved on to installing FOG on its own server and Server 2008 with AD on a separate SC1425 (they’re cheap and I have a few of them laying around).
I am currently in the image-building process and using this guide [url]http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/2224-create-a-master-windows-7-image[/url] .
I plan on using the T5730s as the thin clients and am currently using another machine to build the image. Once this image is done and “sucked up” to the FOG server, all I should have to do is set the T5730s to PXE and they will suck down the image?
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Why do you want to have a 2008 server? FOG / Linux can do DHCP just fine, and that’s the easiest way to set it up when you install FOG
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Ah, I read a little bit fast, the router provides DHCP… It boils down to knowing if the router has an option to set the TFTP/PXE settings in it (option 66/67). If not, just use the linux as dhcp instead of the router, it will work fine.
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Yes, and no.
Being that you are new to FOG, I will run through what I tell my staff when I set them up with a FOG server.
After your FOG server has been set up, You have to do as Gilou suggested and give the option 66 and 67 options to your DHCP router properties pointing to your FOG server. Set a machine to PXE boot and test to make sure that the FOG pxe boot menu displays.
(IF no PXE menu display we can troubleshoot)
Now that PXE is enabled, I would begin working on my image ( I work virtually but to each his own).
After your image is complete you are ready to upload.[B]Image Management[/B] will allow you to create images, this [U][B]MUST BE DONE PRIOR TO IMPORTING A HOST TO YOUR FOG[/B][/U]
[U][B]SERVER[/B][/U], otherwise you will have to create one and select it later, manually.Navigate to your FOG server web GUI. Click “[B]Image Management[/B]” the 5th icon over from the left. Click “[B]New Image[/B]” on the left. Give the image a name, a description, select “Default” for Storage, and give the file a name, [U]no spaces[/U]. Select Multiple Partition image
– Single Disk (Not resizeable) or Multiple Partition image – All Disks (Not resizeable) (these work best, you can use the others, but if you use Windows 7 I [B]HIGHLY[/B] recommend the Multiple Partition modes). Click Add.[SIZE=2]Now that you have an Image store, you can begin [/SIZE]registering[SIZE=2] a host and imaging.[/SIZE]
You will need to register each unit as a host to the FOG machine, [B]INCLUDING THE MACHINE YOU MADE YOUR IMAGE ON[/B]! I normally register my “imaging machine” as Master or something so you can tell it apart from the rest. Boot your machine and select the PXE boot option. When you are confronted with the FOG PXE screen, register the host (quick registration will get the machine into the web GUI under host management but will still need to be assigned an image.) I recommend using the Full Registration mode, this will allow you to select the image store you previously set up. [B]DO NOT TRY TO QUICK IMAGE YET!!![/B]
Now that you have a registered host and an image store, you can tell the machine to upload it’s image to the FOG server.
Go back to the web GUI, select “[B]Host management[/B]” the 3rd icon over, click “[B]list all hosts[/B]” on the left. Select your “Master” from the list. This will load the machine information, here you can see how you can manually update the information (in case you want to rename, or remove) on the left click “[B]Basic Tasks[/B]”. Click “[B]Upload Image[/B]” your machine should reboot (if not power it off and back on the FOG server can use Wake-on-Lan to wake up and shut down machines but it is an unreliable technology.) Your host machine will begin uploading.
You may go forward with registering your T5370s buy registering the machine to the FOG server and selecting your image store, you may now complete the quick image from the registration menu.
