quick and dirty blade imaging

[wickman]

I hope someone can point me in the right direction. I'm having troubel with something that I think should be simple. I want to create a DVD iso with ghost and my windows 2003 server image file, boot the blade via virtual media on iLO and simply image without loading networking in an OS. Anyone done this? I would love to hear what utils work to create a bootable image that can also store a 2GB image when booted.

Thanks,
Eric

[wickman]

I've answered my own questions to some degree. I was able to use bartpe to load a boot image that included my server ghost image. I mounted it using ilo virtual media and all works but is SOOOO SLOOWWWWW to be totally unusable. I have much quicker success booting bartpe ISO using ilo virtual media but installing network support in bart and downloading image over the network. Over 20 times faster.

Thanks,
Eric

[gregersenj]

Yes, it's slow.
When you mount, using the virtual "drive" option on the ILo, you use the ILo network, wich run 100Mb.

Since you have choosen HP blades (Good Choice), why don't you get a decent deployment tool.
Like RDP (Rapid deployment Pack) from HP.
It's quick, clean and very freindly.
You can also use it for BIOS/FW upgrade before installation.

[edb_1]

I Agree with the previous post, use the HP Rapid Deployment pack.

Imaging is built in, and it is easy to create images.

I used it to deploy a farm of 13 BL460c's and was able to deploy them all within a day. Usually it would have taken about a week to do.