Search for	Example	Results
A single word	`cat`	Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats".
A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase.	`"cat food"` (quotation marks)	Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase.

Search for	Operator	Example
Two or more words in the same topic	`AND` `and` `+` (plus symbol) `&` (ampersand)	`cat AND dog` `"cat food"+milk` `"cat food"&"dog food"`
Either word in a topic	`OR` `or` `\|` (pipe)	`cat OR dog` `cat \| dog`
Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase	`NOT` `not` `!` (exclamation point)	`NOT cat` `! dog`
Topics that contain one string and do not contain another	`^` (caret)	`cat ^ mouse`
A combination of search types	`( )` parentheses	`cat + (dog \| mouse)` `cat \| dog + (! mouse)`

Server Automation10.51

Administer > SA Provisioning > SA Provisioning Concepts > SA Provisioning Basics

SA Provisioning basics

SA provisioning has three essential parts:

Build Plan framework
The Service OS
Out-of-the-box content

Build Plan framework

A Build Plan consists primarily of a list of steps that can be executed against a target server (the server to be provisioned). These steps specify the various tasks that ultimately provision a server. The framework includes an execution engine that runs the steps sequentially. This makes understanding Build Plans and their actions easy and intuitive.

Build Plans are SA objects, and as such, they can be viewed and manipulated in the SA Client Library. A number of baseline Build Plans are included when an SA Core is installed. These Build Plans can, by default, perform many common provisioning tasks.

Multiple Build Plan steps types are supported such as running a script, deploying a zip package or deploying a configuration file with parameter substitution. Other step types integrate with various SA features and provide the ability to attach software policies, start remediation, join a device group and more.

The Service OS

SA ships with several minimal RAM-based operating systems that can be started over a network, from physical or from virtual media (CD, DVD or ISO images), on a physical server or virtual machine. These are called Service OSes. Because of the limited functionality within a service OS, only a subset of SA operations can be run against a server that has been booted into a service OS. The primary purpose of a service OS is to enable installation of a full operating system, also known as a Production OS as well as other maintenance tasks that cannot be performed from a production OS.

The service OS is the means by which the Build Plan framework gathers information and executes tasks on a target server. These service OSes make use of a special instance of the SA Agent configured to run in this limited environment.

Starting a server in the service OS is also known as bringing the server into Maintenance mode. Servers in Maintenance mode are recognizable by the icon that is displayed in the SA Client and by their Maintenance status.

Minimum requirements to run a service OS is an x86 CPU (recommended x86-64) and 2 GB of RAM.

Maintenance Mode Icon

Service OSes can be booted on any server, whether or not it has an installed OS. A server can safely be booted from a production OS into Maintenance mode and back.

Note While running the Service OS is not in itself destructive, you can execute destructive actions inside the Service OS, like erasing the disk so care must be taken.

Out-of-the-box content

The out-of-the-box content is a collection of Build Plans populated with Build Plan steps that deliver functionality for common use-cases and are the basic building blocks for user-created Build Plans. This includes provisioning of operating systems, network configuration and end-to-end provisioning of HPE ProLiant servers (including firmware and hardware configuration management). Using this functionality is as simple as running the Build Plans.

The out-of-the-box content is installed as part of SA Core installation or upgrade.

Installation-specific parameters can be customized either by editing the command-line arguments of script steps in the Build Plans or by specifying Custom Attributes. These are a generic parameter passing mechanism in SA. The custom attributes that influence the behavior of an out of the box Build Plan are set with blank values on the Build Plan object.

Custom attributes can be specified using a Build Plan or can be specified at the server, device group or facility level. See Defining custom attributes.

SA Provisioning uses a Media Server to serve large objects like OS installation media, system images (for example, Windows WIM images) and collections of drivers and firmware to the server being provisioned. Multiple transfer protocols are supported: HTTP, HTTPS, NFS and SMB (Windows shares). See the SA Provisioning Matrix to determine which protocols are supported with the operating system(s) you want to provision. SA includes a media server that can serve media through SMB and NFS. The Media Server is installed when you choose to install the SA Provisioning Components.

Note You can use any server that supports the transfer protocols above to store and serve media. You will specify the location of the media server in the Build Plan.

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