Is it possible to do this with FOG?

[CHr57]

Hi,

We have a set of 50 blades that should run Server 2022.
They all should look the same, except name/IP.

When we make any changes to the sw setup we would like to reimage all of them and and rejoin them to the AD.

Is that possible with FOG?

[Sebastian Roth]

@CHr57 First off you ought to make sure those machines are able to PXE boot. Check the BIOS/UEFI settings to see if the blades can boot from network (PXE).

DHCP is closely related to PXE booting and so FOG can be setup to host DHCP for you (asked when you run the installer) or you can say no and add DHCP option 66/67 to your existing DHCP server or you can manually setup dnsmasq to do ProxyDHCP if you can’t modify your exiting DHCP server.

The next step I suggest you do is setting up a test FOG server to check if the PXE boot works all the way through. I say this because FOG is relying on iPXE and the Linux kernel to PXE boot machines. Both have their own drivers (which we can also add for you up to a certain point) and there is no general list you can look up your blades to see if they work fine with FOG. In general 90% of hardware does work but there is always a chance of things not working out of the box or not at all.

They all should look the same, except name/IP.

There are three options you have for name changes.

• At the end of a deploy FOS (the FOG Linux OS doing the work) can update the Windows registry to rename the machine. This works for Windows 10/11 but I am not sure this is tested with Windows Server products. FOG web UI -> FOG Settings -> FOG Configuration -> … change hostname early … (from memory)
• Install the fog-client and let it do the renaming.
• The other option is to use WinSetup/OOBE/unattended.xml - not a FOG specific topic but you will find many posts in this forum and the web using this keyword in a search.

The other thing is changing the IP. PXE booting only works when you have a DHCP server and so static IPs is not something FOG needs to take care of usually. Though I guess you could achieve this through WinSetup/OOBE/unattended.xml or fog-client snapins (could break the communication right in the process though).

When we make any changes to the sw setup we would like to reimage all of them and and rejoin them to the AD.

AD join is done using WinSetup/OOBE/unattended.xml or through the fog-client (the same module that does the rename will also do a domain join for you when the settings are enabled).

[CHr57]

@Sebastian-Roth
Thanks, looks promising.
Will set up a test.