White Papers

36 RESTful Server Configuration with iDRAC RESTful API

2.10 Cloning servers with iDRAC RESTful API

Cloning servers saves considerable time and effort whether you do it for installing or re-deploying servers, or

to ensure that nodes in a cluster conform to certain specified settings. Cloning helps in minimizing

configuration discrepancies among cluster nodes by protecting configuration from human errors.

A server master image can be created from a known-good configuration and then imported to multiple

servers. For full clones, where all settings are imported rather than a subset, the source and destination

servers must have matching hardware components and preferably, matching firmware revisions to ensure

compatibility.

Use clones to:

 Quickly deploy multiple identical servers

 Ensure uniform settings across a cluster

 Aid troubleshooting by applying settings from a known-good server to a non-working server

2.11 Creating a master image of an already configured server

When exporting the server configuration profile, there are three options available:

1. Default

2. Clone

3. Replace

These are listed under the heading “ExportUse@Redfish.AllowableValues” in Appendix 2 as part of the JSON

displayed when accessing the following URL in a browser:

https://<iDRAC IP>/redfish/v1/Managers/iDRAC.Embedded.1

For this example, we use the “Clone” option as it ensures that any existing settings on the target device are

overwritten to match the settings in the master image. This process can be destructive as it replaces settings

like RAID volumes on the target server. Verify if an exported SCP will replace RAID volumes by checking if

the RAIDaction value is set to CreateAuto as shown below:

<Attribute Name=”RAIDaction”>CreateAuto</Attribute>

<Attribute Name=”LockStatus”>Unlocked</Attribute>

<!-- <Attribute Name=”T10PIStatus”>Disabled</Attribute>

<Attribute Name=”DiskCachePolicy”>Enabled</Attribute>

<Attribute Name=”RAIDdefaultWritePolicy”>WriteBack</Attribute>

<Attribute Name=”RAIDdefaultReadPolicy”>AdaptiveReadAhead</Attribute>

To enable cloning, update the configuration export script to include the ExportUse option with Clone

specified. This option is added to the JSON payload part of the export script in the same order as the options