How to perform an unattended registration of a target physical machine

  • 7920832
  • 21-Dec-2006
  • 25-Oct-2017

Environment


NetIQ PlateSpin Migrate 9.3 and above
NetIQ PlateSpin Forge 3.x and above
NetIQ PlateSpin Protect 10.4 and above
PlateSpin Migrate 9.2 and previous versions used to convert to a target physical.
PlateSpin Protect 10.3 and previous versions used to failback to a target physical.

Situation

Overview

The following article outlines the required procedures to perform an unattended Registration of a target physical machine with PlateSpin Suite.

Resolution

When discovering a physical target machine for PlateSpin, the machine must be  booted using the  Take Control   boot CD.  After the machine has booted, the system will automatically run a Registration batch script.  This will ask the user for the information required to successfully register the machine to the PlateSpin  server as a valid target for conversions.

The process of having to input the Registration information can be automated.  If this is desired, once the machine is booted into the take control environment, a user-written file can used to populate this information and will not require user interaction.


To take advantage of the automated functionality, the following is required:

For the Linux BOOTOFX.ISO:

 1. Create an answer file using the template listed below.  Ensure that the file is saved as a Linux text file.

   2. Copy the Linux X2P boot ISO file (bootofxx2p.iso) to any Linux machine

   3. Mount the iso file as a root user using the following command:

# mount –o loop <path of the iso file> /mnt

   4. Copy the /mnt/tools/rebuildiso.sh to any directory (ie. /tmp)

   5. Unmount the ISO file.

      # umount /mnt

   6. Go to the directory where you put the above script, and execute it as following:

      # sh ./rebuildiso.sh –i <path of the ISO file> –a <path of the answer file> -m <i586|x86_64>

 

The three parameters that need to be provided are as follows:

a. path of the ISO file

b. path of the answer file

c. machine architecture (ie 32-bit uses i586, 64-bit uses x86_64)

   7. The bootofxx2p.iso will be updated (overwritten) and include the answer file created above.

For the Legacy  WinPE.ISO 

  1. A program capable of editing an ISO image
  2. The PlateSpin WINPERAMDISK.ISO or WINPE.ISO (for servers with less than 384 MB of memory) image that is used for the target physical server registration
  3. For Block Based Transfers Only - Users need to create an empty dummy file named block.ps

Once the above items have been obtained, the following steps are required in order to configure an unattended Registration of a target physical machine:

  1. Create a WinPE "Answers" file using one of the following two samples as a template:


    TEMPLATE USING DHCP:


     

    <WindowsTakeControlParameters xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

    <!-- Enter the URL of the PowerConvert Server -->

    <PowerConvertUrl>http://192.168.1.2:80/powerconvert</PowerConvertUrl>

    <!-- If you would like DHCP, set NicIndex to "-1".  If not, change to the index of the nic that you desire -->

    <NicIndex>-1</NicIndex>

    <!-- If you have SSL enabled, choose to either "Ignore" or "Enforce" SSL Certificate warnings -->

    <SSLCertificateWarnings>Ignore</SSLCertificateWarnings>

    <!-- Enter the PowerConvert Network that you would like register this machine on -->

    <PowerConvertNetwork>Default</PowerConvertNetwork>

    <!-- Enter the hostname of the machine that you would like while the machine is under control -->

    <!--<HostName>weoijne3</HostName>-->

    <!-- Enter the user name of the account that will be connecting and authenticating to the PowerConvert server -->

    <UserName>some.person</UserName>

    <!-- Enter the name of the account that will be connecting and authenticating to the PowerConvert server -->

    <Domain>myDomain.com</Domain>

    <!-- Enter the passowrd of the account that will be connecting and authenticating to the PowerConvert server -->

    <Password>my password</Password>

    </WindowsTakeControlParameters>




    TEMPLATE USING A STATIC IP ADDRESS:

     

    <WindowsTakeControlParameters xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

    <!-- Enter the URL of the PowerConvert Server -->

    <PowerConvertUrl>http://192.168.1.2:80/powerconvert</PowerConvertUrl>

    <!-- If you would like DHCP, set NicIndex to "-1".  If not, change to the index of the nic that you desire -->

    <NicIndex>0</NicIndex>

    <!-- Enter the IP address of the machine only if: 1) NicIndex is > 0 and 2) in the format:

    <ip address>:<0.0.0.0>:<default gateway>:<subnet mask> -->

    <IP>10.1.0.227:0.0.0.0:10.1.220.10:255.0.0.0</IP>

    <!-- If you have SSL enabled, choose to either "Ignore" or "Enforce" SSL Certificate warnings -->

    <SSLCertificateWarnings>Ignore</SSLCertificateWarnings>

    <!-- Enter the PowerConvert Network that you would like register this machine on -->

    <PowerConvertNetwork>Default</PowerConvertNetwork>

    <!-- Enter the hostname of the machine that you would like while the machine is under control -->

    <!--<HostName>weoijne3</HostName>-->

    <!-- Enter the user name of the account that will be connecting and authenticating to the PowerConvert server -->

    <UserName>some.person</UserName>

    <!-- Enter the name of the account that will be connecting and authenticating to the PowerConvert server -->

    <Domain>myDomain.com</Domain>

    <!-- Enter the passowrd of the account that will be connecting and authenticating to the PowerConvert server -->

    <Password>my password</Password>

    </WindowsTakeControlParameters>



  2. Copy and paste the template selected from step 1 into a text editor
  3. Edit the template with the desired settings
  4. IMPORTANT - Save the template as ConfigureTakeControl.xml
  5. Using an ISO editor, open the WINPE.ISO or WINPERAMDISK.ISO file downloaded from the PlateSpin website.


    If using WINPE.ISO, the following should be displayed instead:






    If using WINPERAMDISK.ISO, the following should be displayed:




    In this case, simply open the WINPE.ISO and continue.

  6. Navigate to the: i386\system32\ directory and copy the ConfigureTakeControl.xml file that was created from step 4 into this directory.
    NOTE:  For Block Based Transfers, users must copy the block.ps file to the i386\system32 directory as well.
  7. Save the modified .ISO image.
  8. Burn the new .ISO image as usual and boot the target physical machine with it.  If the steps above were performed correctly, the target physical machine will use the information provided in the file to register itself to the PlateSpin PowerConvert server automatically.