Capture and install operating system images

Insight Control server provisioning provides Build Plans to capture system images and perform image installations of those captured images. You use the capture image Build Plans to make an image of a system with everything setup the way you want it and then you can use the install image Build Plans to deploy or replicate this image onto many systems.

Windows imaging


	IMPORTANT: Windows Image Capture Build Plans contain a `Prepare Windows for Image Capture` step that uses the `Sysprep` tool to remove all system-specific information on the target server, such as the computer name and security identifier (SID).This means the target server that is used to capture the image is no longer usable as a production OS target server. To return the target server to production OS, you have to run a Windows Image Install Build Plan on it to install the image you just captured.

The following requirements must be met for Windows image capture and install Build Plans.

Images can only be captured from servers running a version of Windows supported by IC server provisioning. See the HP Insight Management Support Matrix at http://www.hp.com/go/insightmanagement/docs for details.
When capturing an image, the target server must be booted up and running a production OS.
You must have an Images folder on your Media Server directly under the top level folder of your file share. If you used the HP Insight Control server provisioning Media Server setup utility to set up your Media Server, the folder was created for you.
You must have WinPE uploaded to your appliance. The WinPE image contains imagex.exe, which is required for capturing and installing WIM images. This is true even if you do not PXE boot your servers. See the , HP Insight Control Server Provisioning Installation Guide available at http://www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol/docs, for information on generating and uploading WinPE to the appliance.
The custom attribute WimFileName must be defined. This custom attribute specifies the file name for the WIM image you are creating or installing. The captured Windows image (WIM image) will always be located in the Images folder on your Media Server unless you modify the parameters to the Windows Image Capture and Windows Image Deploy Build Plan steps to use another folder.
The partition that is captured is determined by the combination of the disk number, as reported by diskpart from WinPE, plus the partition label. The disk number is specified in the SystemDiskNumber custom attribute, which defaults to disk 0 if the SystemDiskNumber custom attribute is not set. The partition label is set using the --systemPartitionLabel parameter in the Windows Image Capture Build Plan step, and is set to System if no parameter is specified. Note that on Gen8 servers or newer, the disk number reported by diskpart on the production OS may differ from the disk number reported on the Intelligent Provisioning WinPE, because diskpart will also account for the embedded media used by Intelligent Provisioning. Since the image capture and image deployment is done from WinPE, it is important that the SystemDiskNumber custom attribute is set to the disk number as reported by WinPE. Servers using PXE, instead of the PXE-less Intelligent Provisioning, may see the disk numbers reported differently by diskpart in WinPE, since PXE WinPE does not expose the embedded media that would normally be present in the PXE-less Intelligent Provisioning.
The target server must have similar hardware to the reference server from which the image was captured. Before you use the image tool to install a Windows image, we recommend that you review the ImageX documentation. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722145%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

An example of an HP-provided Windows image capture Build Plan: ProLiant OS - Windows 2012 Standard x64 Image Capture. All HP-provided Windows image capture Build Plans are configured to work on the Standard edition of Windows. To configure for other editions see Install a specific Windows edition.

An example of an HP-provided Windows image install Build Plan: ProLiant OS - Windows 2012 Standard x64 Image Install

Before you use the image tool to install a Windows image, we recommend that you review the ImageX documentation available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722145%28v=ws.10%29.aspx.

Linux imaging

IC server provisioning supports capturing and installing Linux system images as well, however, Build Plans for doing this are not built into the appliance at this time. If you want to Linux imaging, the process is detailed in the Insight Control server provisioning Capturing and Installing Linux System Images white paper, which can be found at http://www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol/docs.

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