Newbie getting started
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Ok I got 1 new pc in my office and 10 more pcs on the way. I will be replacing all of windows 7 computers with new computers running windows 10 profession by the end of the year. I purchased a Windows 10 Pro upgrade open license to deploy a image to get these computers in production quicker.
What is the best way to get started?
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Ok I am having trouble finding a simple guide to follow without overthinking it.
I created a new virtual machine on my VMware ESXi 5.5.0 server, registered it as a host first, now installing windows 10 pro on it.
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@bogle Well the guild you reference yesterday is pretty good.
As a basic uncomplicated outline of what you need to do is here:
- Install windows 10 using the volume media not the OEM media onto your VM. (VMs are great because you can take snapshots at critical points to keep you from needing to totally rebuild your VM if you make a mistake during image creation)
- Switch to audit mode and customize your windows 10 configuration.
- Install any globally used software like MS Office (don’t activate Windows or MS Office save that for post deployment). Don’t install any antivirus in your reference image, do that post deployment.
- Create and install your customized unattend.xml script into c:\windows\panther directory.
- Sysprep the windows image.
- Capture the image with FOG.
One question I should have asked before. How many systems are you going to deploy? Is 11 the right number or is it more?
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I am getting the hang of it.
Going to deploy 10 pcs now and have alot of Windows 7 pcs to replace by the end of the year thanks to Windows 7 EOL Date. I also got 15 Lenovo PCs running windows 10 pro that need a wipe and new install.
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What has me stumped is I already have a install.wim file where that guide says you have a install.esd file that you have to convert to install.wim… that I can’t seem to export just the index 5 Windows 10 pro out of it. I was able to delete the others but then the Windows System Image Manager fails to generate a catalog.
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@bogle said in Newbie getting started:
have alot
How many is a lot? To me a lot is 1000 systems. The reason why I ask if you do have many systems and will need to support them in the future, you might consider setting up MDT to create your reference image. That way you get a repeatable reference image every time. You don’t need to worry about rearm counts or installing stuff by hand. It does take time to setup and get perfected. I’ve been creating images using different methods for many years and it took me about 7 days to get my final image ready for image capture. But using MDT I can go from bare metal to ready to capture by just starting the task sequence.
As for the wim to esd format I’d have to reread that section since I’ve never needed to do that in the past. I’ve just mounted the ISO image on the esxi vm and installed windows that way, then switched to audit mode. I have a generic unattend.xml file so I’m not sure where they are heading with that bit.
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Not alot of systems…I am looking at 150 systems at the most. MDT is a good idea, I am looking at it now.
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@bogle If you take the lite touch approach its real easy to build reference images and when new releases of Windows 10 come out its pretty easy to copy over your task sequences to the new installation media.
Another great source of windows imaging knowledge is the Deployment Research site https://deploymentresearch.com/ I used it quite frequently as I was setting up Windows baseline images.
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Is there a problem somewhere if I can’t delete a host on the fog project server, but I can get on a host pc and delete itself from the pxe menu?
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@bogle I’ve never heard of that issue where you can’t delete it from the web ui but can via the iPXE menu. That is very strange indeed.
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@bogle said in Newbie getting started:
Is there a problem somewhere if I can’t delete a host on the fog project server
Can you explain a bit more? What happens when you remove a host from the web UI? Error message?!
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Well it would just not do anything when after clicking the delete button. I could do a network boot on the client and remove it from there.
It have have something to do with the computers, they are HP ProOne 600s and HP EliteOne 800s running HP SureRecovery… I had to enable legacy pxe boot and disable secure boot for them to see the Fog Server.
From the web UI I can’t power down or do a WOL to the HP ProOne 600. Web UI reports it successfully updated the host. Where are the troubleshooting logs at?
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@bogle said in Newbie getting started:
From the web UI I can’t power down or do a WOL
The power down command comes from the fog client. So that needs to be installed on the target computer so the power off command is seen by the client. Your client check in interval will dictate when the client actually sees the power off command.
The WOL is a bit tricky now days. Windows 8 and 10, when the computer is “shutdown” and fast start is enabled, shutdown is not really powered off, but in an enhanced sleep state so wol does not apply. You can test this by shutting down the computer via the shutdown button and then send the WOL command. Then pull the power from the computer, wait 10 seconds and then plug it it. Now send the WOL command. The computer should wake up. This is because a power up - off the computer is really powered off and not in a sleep state.
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@bogle said in Newbie getting started:
Well it would just not do anything when after clicking the delete button.
There should be a window in the browser coming up asking for the login credentials to confirm the delete. I suppose you do not get this. Possibly you have JavaScript disabled? Other than that we need more information. Please check the apache webserver and PHP-FPM logs (see my signature).
It have have something to do with the computers, they are HP ProOne 600s and HP EliteOne 800s running HP SureRecovery…
I can’t see why the “cannot delete from the web UI” should have something to do with the computer model?!
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I reverted back to a previous snapshot and managed to upload a image!
However an error has been detected.
I created the image from Win10General, then fully registered a new host to boot to the image.
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@bogle Your issue sounds a lot like the one we were tracking here: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/13484/lenovo-yoga-12-issues/6 The OP of that thread didn’t follow through with the testing so we don’t know if the slow connection idea was the root or not.
If you are willing to help us out and test this then we might be able to resolve this “random issue” for good.
Look through my post and then Sebastian’s post to see where we were heading with the testing.
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Sure, I maybe a little slow today because I spent all morning making email work through my failover internet connection after primary internet went down. not fun
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@bogle Take all the time you need, my FOG server is running just fine.
No worries, deal with what is important first.
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Something doesn’t seem right. Here are some screenshots
Image can’t be 0.00
Image details in Fog
Screenshot of fog server /images/
This has to be the image that got uploaded
