This section provides information about the tasks you can
perform before installing an operating system by using the modular
tools.
Before installing an operating system, you can use the modular
tools to perform the following tasks:
- Capture and deploy system settings
- Configure RAID
- Replicate RAID
- Perform a server disk analysis
The following sections describe how to perform these tasks.
Capture and deploy system
settings
Before
installing an operating system, you can capture system settings from
a compatible server to a file and deploy them to your new server by
using the Toolkit jobs and the Advanced Settings Utility (ASU).
The Toolkit provides sample jobs to capture
and deploy settings by using ASU.
These jobs are located in the folder.
- Capture system settings
- The Capture System Settings sample job
captures the system settings of the server and stores them in a file
named ASU_Capture.ini. By default all captured
system settings are stored in the following path, where Machine_Type is
the machine type of the captured system,C:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment
Server\sgdeploy\SGTKWinPE\ASUFiles\Machine_Type.
- Deploy system settings
- The Deploy System Settings sample job deploys
the system settings from the ASU_Capture.ini file
located in the specified directory.
You can customize the following variables for these
jobs from the Altiris Console. The values shown are the defaults.
- TK_ASU_File=ASU_Capture.ini
- TK_ASU_FileLocation="TK_Altiris_Path\ASUFiles\Machine_Type”
- TK_ASU_Mode=save
- TK_ASU_Flags= –group-bios
Note: The TK_ASU_File variable should not
include any path information.
RAID configuration
The Toolkit provides sample jobs to
perform a number of RAID configurations. These jobs are located in
the folder, and
are named according to the RAID configuration they will create, for
example Configure RAID [RAID 0] and Configure
RAID [RAID 1 + Hot Spare].
To perform RAID configuration
using the modular tools follow these steps:
- Start the Altiris Deployment Solution console.
- Navigate to the folder.
- Run the appropriate job against the target system to create the
RAID configuration you want.
RAID replication
If
you have an existing RAID configuration that you want to replicate
to other systems, you can use the sample jobs RAID Capture and RAID
configuration, located in the folder in the Altiris Deployment Solution console.
To capture
an existing RAID configuration, follow these steps:
- Start the Altiris Deployment Solution console.
- Navigate to the folder.
- Run the Capture RAID configuration job
against the system whose RAID configuration you want to replicate.
This
job will create a RAID configuration file and store it on the source
server. By default, it uses the following values:
- RAID configuration file name
- RAID_Configuration.ini
- Location
- C:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\sgdeploy\SGTKWinPE\PolicyFiles\machinetype,
where machinetype is the machine type of the captured
system.
When you have captured the RAID configuration, you can deploy
it by using the
Deploy RAID configuration job
in the folder.
To
deploy the captured RAID configuration:
- Start the Altiris Deployment Solution console.
- Navigate to the folder.
- Run the Deploy RAID configuration job against
the target system.
By default, this job uses the same default file
name and location as the Capture RAID configuration job.
See About customizing sample jobs for information
about customizing the file name and location.
Server disk analysis
The
ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit provides a sample
job to capture the disk information for all disks attached to a given
server. You can use this job after performing RAID configuration to
ensure that when you install a supported
Windows operating system, you
install to disk 0 on the target server.
Note: This job must be run
after RAID configuration is complete, because disk information is
changed by the RAID configuration task.
The job is accessible
from the Altiris Deployment Solution console:.
To perform server disk
analysis, follow these steps:
- Start the Altiris Deployment Solution console.
- Navigate to the folder.
- Run the job Capture Disk Data against the
system for which you want to capture disk information.
The job creates a disk information file and stores it on the
source server at:
C:\Program Files\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment
Server\temp\ID\disk_details.txt.