Creating and stocking the Data Store

The data store typically resides on the same host as the PXE server, but you can create it on any system that meets the prerequisites.

The following sections describe how to ating and Stocking the Data Store:

Prerequisites

• The data store host must have an RSCD agent installed on it, and access control lists (ACLs) must be set in the exports file.
• The data store requires significant disk space.

Required software

• The provision-files.zip file. A sample file name is 8<xx>- <xxx> -provision-files.zip.
• Operating system media for all of the operating systems that you plan to provision.

Creating and stocking the Data Store

You create the data store directory, and then you create subdirectories under it to store the media for the various operating systems that you plan to provision. Although the following instructions suggest specific names for the data store and its subdirectories, you are not required to use those names. The only requirement is that you reference the names correctly when you configure the System Package Types in the Console.

1. Create the data store directory. There are no requirements for the location of this directory or its name. The only requirement is that you reference the names correctly when you configure the System Package Types in the Console, as described in Creating or modifying the system package type in the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management online documentation.
2. Make sure that the roles for users who run provisioning jobs have write access to the data store location (to write in the unattend and kickstart files). Those roles must have ACLs on the server object that is the host for the data store.
3. On the data store host, extract the provision-files.zip file into C:\temp\provisioning (or some other convenient location). The provision-files.zip file contains jumpstart, linux, and winpe subdirectories.
4. If you plan to provision Linux and ESX:
   1. Copy the following files from C:\temp\provisioning\pxeto the root directory of your data store:
      • bmilinux.tar
      • bmiwin.exe
   2. In the root directory of the data store, create directories appropriate for the operating systems that you plan to provision. For example:
      • ESX4
      • RHEL_5
   3. Copy the entire contents of the installation media into the folders you just created. For example, if you plan to provision Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, copy the installation media under the RHEL_5 directory you just created.
5. If you plan to provision Windows:
   1. Create the following directories in the data store directory, as appropriate for the OSs that you plan to provision. (The names are arbitrary. The example on the next page does not use these names.)
      • Win2k3
      • Win2k3E
      • Win2k3-x64E
      • Win2k3-x64S
      • Win2k8
      • Win2k8-x64
      • Win2k8R2
   2. (For Windows 2003) Copy the i386 directory (including all of its contents) from the installation media for each Windows OS into its respective folder.
   3. (For Windows 2003 x64) Copy the i386 and the AMD64 directories (including all of their contents) from the installation media for each Windows OS into their respective folders.
   4. (For Windows 2008) Copy the entire contents of the installation media into the Win2k8 or Win2k8-x64 directory into their respective folders.
   5. (For Windows 2003 R2) Copy the entire contents of the installation media into the Win2k3R2 directory. This includes the CMPNENTS directory from the R2 installation media. Be sure to create a subdirectory named CMPNENTS in your data store and duplicate the contents from the installation media.
      
      • Data store root name (ds03).
      • Arbitrary directory names that you create to organize your data store.
      • Directories and their contents copied from the OS installation media. Do not change these names.
      • Files extracted from provision-files.zip (provided by BMC Software). You must copy these files into the data store root directory.