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In order to set up automation, you must make the following decisions:
򐂰 Which pre-boot operating system do you want to use?
򐂰 Which automation boot method works best for your environment?
We discuss these in the following sections.
2.4.1 Which pre-boot operating system do you want to use?
Deployment Solution supports the following automation operating systems:
Windows PE, Fedora Linux, MS-DOS, and FreeDOS. This section provides an
overview of the available automation operating systems, so you can find an
environment (or environments) that suits your needs.
An important thing to note is that the automation environment you use is not
constrained by the production operating system on the computer. All of the
Deployment Solution automation tools support these operating systems, so you
can perform automation tasks in any operating system (Linux computers can be
imaged from DOS, Windows computers can be imaged from Linux, and so on).
You might even use two automation operating systems for different tasks within
the same job. For example, you might perform a BIOS update in DOS, then boot
to Windows PE or Linux to perform an imaging task.
When you set up your test environment, you might want to run automation jobs in
multiple operating systems to see if one performs better in your environment.
The following sections give a brief overview of the automation operating systems.
DOS
DOS is still used often today as a pre-boot environment, though new
technologies have emerged that might better suit your environment, such as
Windows PE.
The largest roadblocks most companies face when using DOS are access to
drivers that support modern hardware, and security concerns. DOS still performs
well for several tasks though, and can be a good choice if you have the proper
driver support.
DOS typically requires only around 1 MB of space.
DOS provides an additional advantage in a PXE environment. When performing
an automation task on multiple computers, the PXE server can use multicast to
boot automation, which enables large numbers of managed computers to boot
DOS simultaneously.
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Deployment using Altiris on IBM System x and BladeCenter Servers