High availability for the PXE provisioning infrastructure

For high availability, BMC recommends configuring two of each element of the required PXE provisioning infrastructure. For example, configure redundant PXE servers and TFTP servers. A network load-balancing technology should present a virtual IP address (VIP), configured to achieve high availability. The VIP is then used during device provisioning to reach the required services.

The provisioning infrastructure also uses other components in the framework, specifically the database and data store servers. To have a true highly available PXE provisioning service, you must ensure that all components on which the service depends are also highly available. See other sections for database and data store solutions.

Implementation

To implement high availability for the PXE infrastructure, you perform the following actions:

1. Install the PXE server and TFTP components.
2. Install network load-balancing technology to provide for redundancy of each element of the PXE provisioning infrastructure.
3. Modify, if necessary, the PXE server's JDBC connection string to refer to a highly available database service, according to the database vendor's recommendations.