First Time Using Fog
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Hello all,
I apologize if this is in the wrong area. This 1 made the most sense
I have a fog server set up with 0.32 on a make shift PXE network for testing purposes. So far there is a PXE server, a dumb switch and Fog.I am confused on how to get the 1st image to the Fog server. I built an image of Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition x86 using nlite [never can get the updates to install correctly], installed on a server, fully updated and installed with all of the desired programs; a fully functional image on a server provisioned as it should be for a client. How do I get that to Fog for deployment?
I assume after I get the image on Fog I can PXE the new server [to be installed] to Fog and push the image from the web UI. If I’m wrong on that I can bring that up later if the User Guide doesn’t show me the light.
The eventual setup will be a PXE server, a real switch, Fog and an image server for Linux. I believe that Fog can also handle the Linux stuff but our Linux Admins like to do it their way. I’m not sure how all of this will work on the network side for PXE and such but that’s above my pay grade
The Fog server will be used to deploy Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 to up to 800 or so servers eventually. Any suggestions on hardware for the production Fog server? Thank for the help in advance.
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[quote=“Josh B, post: 2480, member: 804”]Hello all,
I apologize if this is in the wrong area. This 1 made the most sense I have a fog server set up with 0.32 on a make shift PXE network for testing purposes. So far there is a PXE server, a dumb switch and Fog.I am confused on how to get the 1st image to the Fog server. I built an image of Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition x86 using nlite [never can get the updates to install correctly], installed on a server, fully updated and installed with all of the desired programs; a fully functional image on a server provisioned as it should be for a client. How do I get that to Fog for deployment?[/quote]
You are wanting to upload the image to the fog server. To do so please see below.
#1. You need to register the server / pc you want to upload the image on (the client machine).
PXE boot the computer and do a quick registration
#2. Go into the Web UI and create a new image / name it / set the image type / save it
#3. Go to the clients page of the web UI and designate the computer to the new image name you created. Once this is saved select UPLOAD and send the image from the client to the server.
Lay-men terms you need to register, create an image, assign an image, and upload an image.
This is all in the documentation btw
[quote=“Josh B, post: 2480, member: 804”]
I assume after I get the image on Fog I can PXE the new server [to be installed] to Fog and push the image from the web UI. If I’m wrong on that I can bring that up later if the User Guide doesn’t show me the light.[/quote]Correct
[quote=“Josh B, post: 2480, member: 804”]
The eventual setup will be a PXE server, a real switch, Fog and an image server for Linux. I believe that Fog can also handle the Linux stuff but our Linux Admins like to do it their way. I’m not sure how all of this will work on the network side for PXE and such but that’s above my pay grade :)[/quote]Depending on how your network is set up (Vlan’s / layer 2 or 3 / etc.) you may run into issues. Some networks that are not on vlan’s or have other servers running PXE services (voip phones for example) run into problems with fog.
As long as you have a vlan structure you should be fine.
There are also work arounds for voip phones and other pxe based services, feel free to ask or check the KB’s.[quote=“Josh B, post: 2480, member: 804”]
The Fog server will be used to deploy Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 to up to 800 or so servers eventually. Any suggestions on hardware for the production Fog server? Thank for the help in advance.[/quote]Depending on how much $$$ you are wanting to spend on a setup, I’ve seen very good results running Vmware ESXi server on a raid array with NIC teaming. Raid is almost a necessity, and the more network backbone you have the better. I’ve seen really good transfer speeds in the 4+ Gig/min speeds on some setups, but YMMV.
I also suggest you keep your image size as slim as possible, especially if you are doing multi-casting.
Feel free to ask us any other questions.
thx.[/quote]
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cool - so uploading the image is as easy as I thought it’d be! I’ll give it a go later today if time allows.
[quote]
Depending on how your network is set up (Vlan’s / layer 2 or 3 / etc.) you may run into issues. Some networks that are not on vlan’s or have other servers running PXE services (voip phones for example) run into problems with fog.As long as you have a vlan structure you should be fine.
There are also work arounds for voip phones and other pxe based services, feel free to ask or check the KB’s.[/quote]We are in a data center [not sure of what layer the network equipment is - again the pay grade bit] but I do know with the setup that we are building out for the new portion that the Fog server will be running on is like this:
-servers get a /29 vlan
-VIOP gets a vlan of it’s own
-the idea is for Fog to be accessible across all vlans to allow light touch to zero touch deployments of servers already racked and ready to boot PXE
-also the idea is to have a PXE server accessible over all vlans and be able to choose whether you get Windows installs [Fog] or Linux installs [whatever system they have in mind for that]I’m still brain storming a bit with our Linux guys but I’m not one to sit and wait for someone to make the decision for me
[quote]Depending on how much $$$ you are wanting to spend on a setup, I’ve seen very good results running Vmware ESXi server on a raid array with NIC teaming. Raid is almost a necessity, and the more network backbone you have the better. I’ve seen really good transfer speeds in the 4+ Gig/min speeds on some setups, but YMMV.[/quote]
We have a lot of equipment on hand. I was thinking about a server dedicated to this [we haven’t completely jumped on the virtual/cloud thing as quick as we had hoped - although it is also in development]. Maybe something like this:
CPU: 2x Intel Xeon QC 1.86GHz+
RAM: 8GB DDR2 1333MHz
HDD: 6x 146GB SAS 15K [RAID6 on a PERC 6/i][quote]I also suggest you keep your image size as slim as possible, especially if you are doing multi-casting.[/quote]
If we multi-cast it will probably not be more than a couple at a time. I don’t plan on deploying 20 boxes at once or anything - lol
Thanks for the speedy help!
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One last thing to note is that if you plan on deploying server 2003 to different hardware look out for issues with a hardware extraction layer or “HAL” - Server 2003 must adhere to the same imaging rules as Windows XP. - [url]http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309283[/url]
If you image multiple pieces of equipment that don’t have the same server hardware internally you will need to plan for, and work around some bumps.
google around for a good server 2003 imaging guide before you write your sysprep.inf and upload an image. I know MSFN has a guide or 2 out there.
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thanks! I’ve actually spent quite a bit of time on MSFN over the years trying to figure out the runonce and stuff like that. Hopefully we’ll only be doing 2008 but 2003 is still an option. The old Perl scripted stuff that we used a few years ago had about 30 different motherboards and all the drivers installed to each server. It was a pain and took up a lot of space but never had any HAL issues out of it. I was thinking about making a master image for 2003 with at least all the LAN drivers and chipsets. We will mostly be deploying to 1950, 2950, R series Dell and maybe [just maybe] some IBM x335. I’m going to try to avoid Windows on those as best as I can - lol