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MAC-Independent Provisioning Overview |
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MAC-Independent Provisioning Overview |
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MAC-Independent Provisioning, also known as "MAC-Indy", "Pull Provisioning" or "On-the-fly Provisioning" is an interactive provisioning mode in which the user selects what to operating system ("Provisioning Role") to install from the client system’s keyboard after the system does a network boot ("netboot" or "PXE boot").
Data centers and other environments where the IT staff rarely touches physical systems are best provisioned using MAC-Specific Provisioning.
Click on MAC-Independent Provisioning and you will first be presented with the following screen (which has no roles on it because you just installed Provisioner and haven’t yet added any MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles):
Note that until you create a MAC-Independent Provisioning Role, the default for client systems that boot from the network is to be redirected to boot from their local hard disk.
After you have have created MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles, you will be presented with the list of Provisioning Roles (each containing an operating system and optionally additional applications and post-installation scripts) that you (the Provisioner Administrator) have prepared and that will be selected from by the person on the client system from the PXE (Pre-boot eXecution Environment) screen when a system boots to the network.
There is a one-to-one correspondence between the MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles Setup page (above) and the screen that will appear on the display of the client system that made a network boot request (below):
Note: this screen will not appear on a client system if either a MAC-Specific Provisioning Role or a MAC-Specific Imaging Profile already exists for for the client system, since its MAC address is known to Provisioner.
When the client system boots to the network, the user will select an item from a list (or if a default was set by the Provisioner Administrator, it will be installed starting in 60 seconds if no selection is made) as shown above.
Enable/Disable MAC-Independent Provisioning
Before provisioning systems using MAC-Indy provisioning, be sure to enable the feature by clicking on the button shown below. Before:
After:
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Changing MAC-Independent Client Host Name, Password and other Parameters
When you install Provisioner, MAC-Independent Roles values for host name and other parameters are automatically embedded in the control files for each operating system. All provisioned systems will have the same assigned values and will be assigned dynamic IP addresses by your existing (non-Provisioner) authoritative DHCP server.
The defaults are: Client host name: pxeprovisioned Client domain name: pxebaremetal Client time zone: GMT Client root password: unsecure
To regenerate the control files with values of your choosing, run the script setup.pl. All changes you have made to the files will be lost, so back them up first, then after regenerating the control files, cut and paste into the new files the changes you had made previously):
# cd /home/tftpboot/bin # perl setup.pl
................................................................................ Cisco Server Provisioner Setup Menu Version: Provisioner -6.1.2-1.
If you want to change your existing Cisco Server Provisioner settings, select from the options below:
3: Network setup 4: Disk Image Snapshot and Restore storage directory setup 5: Create control files for MAC-Independent provisioning 6: Install or update license key file
7: Restart the LinMin services and Exit LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning Setup 8: Do Not restart the LinMin services just Exit
Please make a selection:5
You will then be prompted to change the values. When done, enter 7 to restart the Cisco Server Provisioner services and exit the script. |
On the MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles page, enter the keystroke (numbers and/or letters) to be associated with the menu item and the name (menu item text) that will be shown on the MAC-Independent Provisioning Menu. The kernel parameters field has other uses as well. For example, if the target machine has multiple Ethernet interfaces then the kernel should be passed the correct provisioning interface via the parameter "ksdevice" e.g. "ksdevice=eth1", where you want to provision over eth1 and not eth0.
Arrange the MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles for display When you have created menu items, the MAC-Independent Provisioning Roles page will display the menu items. Arrange the order in which the boot menu will display the items by using the arrows to the right of the Make Default buttons.
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When you select a “key” (keystroke to be pressed by the user on the client system to provision a certain distro or OS) and you move items up and down, the numbers will be out of order. If you wish to change numbers, please make sure you don’t use an already assigned number. You may also use alphanumeric character strings (with no spaces) instead of single numbers or letters.