HP Insight Control for Linux 6.2 User Guide

10 Capturing and deploying Linux images
This chapter addresses the following topics:
• “Overview of capturing and deploying Linux images ” (page 109)
• “Prerequisites to capturing a Linux image” (page 111)
• “Capturing a Linux image from a managed system” (page 114)
• “Preparing for scalable deployment” (page 115)
• “Deploying a captured Linux image to one or more managed system” (page 118)
• “Insight Control for Linux partition wizard overview” (page 120)
10.1 Overview of capturing and deploying Linux images
NOTE: Insight Control for Linux does not support capture and deployment of:
• VMware ESX or VMware ESXi host images.
• SLES 10 systems installed with Software RAID and SLES 11 systems installed with Software
RAID.
• The RAM disk hardware discovery operation presents the SMART ARRAY controllers in a
different order from the hardware discovery method in the SLES 10 SP3 operating system,
which can result in a deploy operation writing the OS image to the wrong disk.
The Deploy→Operating System menu provides the ability for you to capture a Linux image
from a managed system and deploy that image to one or more target managed systems.
IMPORTANT: Captured images are stored in a directory accessible through a web server interface
that allows anonymous access; captured images are deployed using SSH. Therefore, any user
on the network can retrieve captured images in the Insight Control for Linux repository. HP
recommends that captured images do not contain confidential data if the network is untrusted.
Insight Control for Linux supports options that allow you to adjust and customize captured and
deployed images.
For information on scripts that you can use before and after capturing a Linux image, see
Section 10.1.2 (page 110) and Section 10.1.3 (page 111).
Capturing a Linux image is useful if you want replicate the OS environment from one managed
system to one or more managed systems to maintain a consistent environment on all managed
systems.
The capture operation attempts to reboot the managed system where the image is captured to
the Insight Control for Linux RAM disk environment. After the OS image is captured, the system
is rebooted back to its installed OS.
The Insight Control for Linux image deployment tool provides an integrated Partition Wizard
to enable you to modify the deployed images disk layout, file system selection, and logical
volumes.
Using the Partition Wizard during image deployment requires an in depth understanding of
Linux, kernel modules, and the grub boot loader.
10.1 Overview of capturing and deploying Linux images 109