The provisioning and imaging server has different modes of operation that impact physical resources differently.

-Provisioning Linux and Legacy Windows (Server 2003/XP): moderately interactive, with the client system requesting large numbers of relatively small files from the Provisioner PXE Server.

-Provisioning Windows Server 2008: a single large (~2GB) ISO file is transported to the client system, then the provisioning process takes place entirely on the client system with very minor interaction with the Provisioner PXE Server

-Imaging: large files are packetized and transported between the Provisioner PXE Server and client system. File sizes are typically between 3-5 GB (Linux) and 15 GB (Windows Server 2008) for base OS installations. If imaging is to be used for backing up and restoring production systems, then expect a 33% compression (and thus network traffic) of the amount of used disk space on each client.

Physical resource enhancements that result in net performance gains:

-Network speed

-Client-side disk speed (to reduce formatting and file copy times)

-Client-side processor speed (especially for imaging: compression/decompression processing)

-Provisioner PXE Server disk speed (for servicing concurrent OS media files and disk image files)

Physical resource enhancements that result in relatively modest performance gains:

-Provisioner PXE Server processor speed (relatively little CPU activity on the Provisioner PXE Server side)

-Provisioner PXE Server amount of RAM (minimum 1 GB RAM, 2-4 GB RAM recommended)

-Provisioner PXE Server database disk speed (database operations are very simple and data sets are few)

Refer to Provisioner PXE Server Configuration - Hardware Requirements for more details.

The following benchmarks were made to show the relative amount of time taken by various provisioning functions. The measurements were made in a QA lab with less than optimum system hardware, including networking.

Provisioner PXE Server:

•Host hardware: Pentium D 3.2GHz, 4GB RAM, 1 TB SATA-300 drive, 100 Mbit NIC

•Host OS: CentOS 5.5 i386, running VMware Workstation

•Guest OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 i386 assigned 512MB RAM, 100GB disk

Client System:

•Pentium D 3.2GHz, 2GB RAM, 160 GB SATA drive, 100 Mbit NIC

Time in Minutes:Seconds