Force bios to PXE boot after task

[babouche]

Hi,
I would like to know if there is a way after sending a deploy task to an host (who is configured to PXE boot manually with F12 and select PXE boot) to force the PXE boot once with the task ? Or do we need to set the PXE boot to check first always (but the booting time is longer) Sorry for my english

Also, is there a way to tweak/accelerate the PXE boot time, i have a good network but its slow.

Thanks !

[george1421]

In my company we use your way of imaging. We schedule a deploy in the web ui of fog. Then on target computer power on computer and press F12 to the boot manager on the target computer. From that screen we pick pxe boot. The computer loads FOG and starts imaging right away. It takes maybe 20 seconds from the time I press PXE boot to the time FOG starts imaging on the target computer.

What do you see is slow? Do you have a 1GbE network or is it slower than 1GbE?

[babouche]

Start PXE…
Check media presence…
start pxe over ipv4 on mac: XXXXXXXXXXXX (stuck 30 seconds a this) Maybe it’s because i have radius authentification+dhcp.
And then the tftp begin (it takes then 20 second to begin the deployement)

[george1421]

@babouche said in Force bios to PXE boot after task:

Start PXE…
Check media presence…
start pxe over ipv4 on mac: XXXXXXXXXXXX (stuck 30 seconds a this) Maybe it’s because i have radius authentification+dhcp.

This bit is part of your infrastructure. As you suggested it appears your NAC/NAP system is running a bit slow at this point. I think I would focus on understanding why this is slow, especially since during the boot process of the FOS Engine it queries for a DHCP address 3 times (once for PXE ROM, once for iPXE (fog boot menu), and once for the FOS engine). If you are getting a delay each time I can see why you have a slow booting process.

And then the tftp begin (it takes then 20 second to begin the deployment)

This sounds normal from my experience. The iPXE boot manager (program that creates the FOG iPXE menu) is small in size, about 1MB and the FOS engine (the OS that clones the hard drives) is about 28MB in size. These files should transfer really fast. The FOS Engine takes about 15 seconds to boot and start doing things.