Defining an OS installation profile — Windows

To define a Windows OS Installation Profile, use the install_profile script. Example:

/opt/opsware/mm_wordbot/util/install_profile create --user myUser --customerID 0 --MRLID 74870001 --installConfigFile /root/unattend.xml --platform ' Windows 2008' --name "win 2008 profile" –description “Install Profile description” –buildCustomizationScriptID 64870001 –winDiskPartitioningFile /root/winpart.txt –winDiskFormattingFile /root/winformat.txt –winInstallDrive D –winHWSignature "VMWARE, INC. VMWARE VIRTUAL PLATFORM" /root/hwsig.xml

1. Define the operating system by specifying the following information:
   • Name: (Required) Specify the display name for the Windows operating system.

   • Description: (Optional) Provide a text description to identify the platform and hardware support.

   • Customer: (Required) Associate the Windows operating system with a specific customer.

   • Platform: (Required) Specify the platform of the Windows operating system The file that you upload can have any file name, however, OS Provisioning renames the file during upload with the valid file name required by the vendor installation program.

   • OS Media: (Required) Specify the MRL ID for the Windows operating system. See Creating Media Resource Locators (MRLs) for more information.

   • Custom Disk Partitioning: The script you provide is passed to the Microsoft diskpart.exe utility and is used during operating system installation. Refer to the Microsoft Windows product documentation for more information. Default script is:

     rescan

     select disk 0

     clean

     create partition primary

     active

     assign letter=C

   • Custom Disk Formatting: This script is executed directly onto the hard drive during operating system installation.

   • Install Drive: Indicates the drive letter on which to install the Windows operating system. Default script is:

     format.com C: /FS:NTFS /Q /Y /V:

   • Build Customization: (Optional) Specify the ID of a build script to customize the way the build process operates for the Windows operating system. You can customize the build process specifically for each pre-installation environment. You must follow the requirements for build customization scripts to use this feature.

     See Build customization scripts for more information.

   • Response File: (Required) Select a Windows response file to upload into the OS Installation Profile. This can be an unattend.xml for unattended Windows installations or a sysprep.inf type file for image type Windows installations.

   • Hardware Signatures: (Optional) Define the hardware that the operating system supports.

Hardware signature files for Windows

A Windows setup response File (unattend.xml) typically contains a mix of generic operating system configuration settings and hardware-specific driver configuration settings. This mixture of generic and hardware-specific configuration settings can make it difficult to manage a single OS Installation Profile that must be used by many different hardware models.

SA includes a mechanism called Hardware Profiles that allow you to keep the generic configuration settings in unattend.xml separate from the hardware‑specific driver configuration settings.

During OS Provisioning, SA will examine the server being provisioned and, if a matching Hardware Profile is available for the server model, will automatically add in the appropriate hardware-specific driver configuration settings from unattend.xml.

Based on the hardware you expect to provision, you can upload hardware-specific files for each Windows OS Installation Profile. You can then map a signature for that hardware to the correct hardware-specific profile. OS Provisioning selects the correct Hardware Signature file at build time based on the hardware signature of the server that is to be provisioned.

Utilities referenced by the Hardware Signature file must be accessible through the network during build time.