Adaptiva One Site Peer to Peer PXE. Revolutionary Solution for Bare Metal Image Deployment in Large Distributed Networks.

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1 Adaptiva One Site Peer to Peer PXE Revolutionary Solution for Bare Metal Image Deployment in Large Distributed Networks User Guide A d a p t i v a O n e S i t e P e e r t o P e e r P X E U s e r G u i d e Page 1

2 1. Table of contents 1. Table of contents 2. What is PXE 3. Benefits of Peer to Peer PXE 4. Licensing Considerations 5. Introducing the Peer to Peer PXE Perspective 6. Enabling Peer to Peer PXE 7. Verifying P2P PXE Enablement 8. Preparing boot images 9. Using Peer to Peer PXE 2. What is PXE PXE (pronounced as pixie) is a set of protocols designed to boot computers using a network card, without requiring any pre-existing operating system. It was introduced by Intel in 1999 and builds upon widely used protocols such as IP, UDP, DHCP, and TFTP. Microsoft s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) product provides support for PXE protocol to enable bare metal image deployment scenarios. This requires the installation of a PXE Service Point site system role on a server, along with prerequisites such as Windows Deployment Services (WDS), and the associated changes to network infrastructure, notably: 1. IP helper changes are usually required on network routers, to allow PXE Service Points to function across different subnets 2. DHCP server configuration changes are usually required, so that DHCP requests from PXE clients can contain references to the PXE Service Point These requirements for deploying servers, WDS, and network infrastructure changes present serious challenges in large distributed networks, where bare metal provisioning capabilities need to be provided to hundreds or thousands of far flung locations. A d a p t i v a O n e S i t e P e e r t o P e e r P X E U s e r G u i d e Page 2

3 3. Benefits of Peer to Peer PXE Adaptiva s Peer to Peer PXE technology is a revolutionary advance in bare metal provisioning for large global networks. 1. No servers or server roles are required 2. No router changes are required 3. No DHCP server configuration changes are required Enabling Peer to Peer PXE and using it is straightforward. 1. Decide which parts of your network require PXE capabilities 2. Create one or more SCCM collections that correspond to these parts of your network, OR use the All Systems collection to enable PXE globally 3. Specify these collections on the Adaptiva Workbench Peer to Peer PXE capabilities will turn on in the selected parts of your network. All the necessary software components will be automatically deployed on the networks you selected, and PXE capabilities will become available for use within the next 1-2 minutes. 4. Licensing Considerations Adaptiva s Peer to Peer PXE technology is a standard feature included with the Adaptiva One Site product. No separate licensing or additional purchase is required. 5. Introducing the Peer to Peer PXE Perspective To start using Peer to Peer PXE, you must first open the Peer to Peer PXE Perspective, which contains UI for enabling and using Peer to Peer PXE. 1. Open the Home perspective by clicking on the Home icon in the toolbar, then right-click on the root folder Workbench Perspectives, and select the Expand All menu item. This will display all the available perspectives as shown below. A d a p t i v a O n e S i t e P e e r t o P e e r P X E U s e r G u i d e Page 3

The window on the left part of your screen is the P2P PXE Task Navigator, which contains two entries. a.

4 2. Open the Peer to Peer PXE perspective by double-clicking the item named: One Site - Peer to Peer PXE Perspective, as shown above 3. This will open the Peer to Peer PXE perspective, which is displayed below 4. The window on the left part of your screen is the P2P PXE Task Navigator, which contains two entries. a. You may click the Edit P2P PXE Policy Settings item to enable and disable Peer to Peer PXE, or to select the parts of the network where it is made available. A d a p t i v a O n e S i t e P e e r t o P e e r P X E U s e r G u i d e Page 4

b. You may click the Manage Unknown Computers item to work with unknown computers, if you re using SCCM R2 or later, and have enabled Unknown computer support within SCCM.

5 b. You may click the Manage Unknown Computers item to work with unknown computers, if you re using SCCM R2 or later, and have enabled Unknown computer support within SCCM. Please refer to Technet for further details of Unknown computer support in SCCM R2. 5. The central part of your screen contains the editor area, which will display either the P2P PXE Settings editor, or the Manage Unknown computers editor, depending on which of the two tasks you are performing. 6. The right part of your screen contains a Collection explorer. It displays all your SCCM collections, and allows you to drag and drop them into the P2P PXE Settings editor. As always, the Collection explorer automatically detects the changes whenever you create, delete, or modify any collections, and refreshes itself. It also lets you find the collection you want by typing a few characters of its name in the search box. 6. Enabling Peer to Peer PXE 1. Open the P2P PXE Settings editor by clicking the Edit P2P PXE Policy Settings item in the P2P PXE Task Navigator 2. This will open the editor window, which is shown below A d a p t i v a O n e S i t e P e e r t o P e e r P X E U s e r G u i d e Page 5

3. Download the Windows Automated Installation Kit, or WAIK, from Microsoft s web site. This toolkit contains several small tools that are required for PXE booting Windows boot images. a. You may use the following link to download the WAIK: b.

6 3. Download the Windows Automated Installation Kit, or WAIK, from Microsoft s web site. This toolkit contains several small tools that are required for PXE booting Windows boot images. a. You may use the following link to download the WAIK: b Install the WAIK to the Adaptiva One Site server machine, and specify the path of the installation folder in the WAIK location field of the editor 5. Check the box Enable Unknown computer Support if you ll be supporting unknown computers in future 6. Drag and drop one or more SCCM collections into the Target collections field. All the computers that are part of these collections will automatically receive a small number of WAIK tools, and will become capable of becoming PXE servers and TFTP servers to serve other machines on their respective subnets a. Peer to Peer PXE is zero impact for your client computers. We highly recommend enabling Peer to Peer PXE on all your computers, and completely do away with PXE service points in your entire SCCM environment - Peer to Peer PXE is much more resilient and easy to manage 7. If you wish to exclude certain computers from being booted up using PXE, you may enter their MAC addresses into the MAC Exclusion List field of the editor 8. Now click on the Enable button in the Enable/Disable P2P PXE section of the editor 9. The enabler dialog box will open, and will automatically perform all the required tasks, as shown below A d a p t i v a O n e S i t e P e e r t o P e e r P X E U s e r G u i d e Page 6

7 7. Verifying P2P PXE Enablement Peer to Peer PXE works silently in the background, without requiring any day to day operational supervision from the administrator. It can be reassuring to physically verify that it has actually been enabled and that the required elements are indeed in place. 1. On the Adaptiva server, you can verify that the WAIK tools have been published as Adaptiva content a. Open the C:\Program files\adaptiva\adaptivaserver\data\contentlibrary folder i. On 64-bit systems, the folder path is: C:\Program files (x86)\adaptiva\adaptivaserver\data\contentlibrary b. The file Adaptiva$WAIK$.1.content contains 7 files which will be sent to clients, to enable PXE capabilities c. File size should be about 0.5 MB d. It is a ZIP file under the covers, you can open it and examine its contents 2. On one or more Adaptiva clients, you can verify that the WAIK tools have been automatically downloaded a. Open the C:\Program files\adaptiva\adaptivaclient\bin\p2ppxe folder i. On 64-bit systems, the folder path is: C:\Program files (X86)\Adaptiva\AdaptivaClient\Bin\P2PPxe b. The following 7 files will be present - these were sent by the server: i. Abortpxe.com ii. Bcdedit.exe iii. Boot.sdi iv. Bootmgr.exe v. Pxeboot.com vi. Pxeboot.n12 vii. Wgl4_boot.ttf 3. On one or more Adaptiva clients registry, you can verify that Peer to Peer PXE has been turned on: a. Parent key: HKLM\Software\Javasoft\Prefs\Adaptiva\Client b. Registry value name: p2p_pxe.pxe_enabled c. This should be set to: true 8. Preparing Boot Images A d a p t i v a O n e S i t e P e e r t o P e e r P X E U s e r G u i d e Page 7

8 SCCM automatically creates two boot images for you, named: 1. Boot image (x64) 2. Boot image (x86) These images contain Windows PE and a lot of other files that are needed for running SCCM task sequences. However, they have dependencies on SCCM PXE Service Points, and must be modified whenever they are to be used independently, e.g. for booting from USB Drives. These modifications are simple, and are required only once. The steps have been described in an Adaptiva One Site user guide entitled: How to Enable Boot Images for Adaptiva P2P PXE. 9. Using Peer to Peer PXE Using Peer to Peer PXE functionality is simple. You just do what you d do for bare metal provisioning - no extra steps are required. Some common gotchas have been documented here for you: 1. Make sure you have advertized an appropriate task sequence to an appropriate SCCM collection, including to unknown computers, if you re using unknown computers 2. Make sure the computer you re trying to boot isn t showing up under the Unprovisioned Computers child node of the Operating System Deployment node in the SCCM admin console 3. Make sure the computer you re trying to boot isn t showing up under Unknown computers list in the Adaptiva workbench A d a p t i v a O n e S i t e P e e r t o P e e r P X E U s e r G u i d e Page 8

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