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Implementing an Image Management System with Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment: Case Studies and Business Benefits

Vasfi GucerScott Kay

Learn how to use TPM for OS Deployment to your strategic advantage

Learn about case studies

Learn about best practice deployment scenarios

Redguides for Business Leaders

Executive overview

IBM® Tivoli® Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment provides an easy-to-use console for remote OS deployment and management. Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment offers flexible alternatives for creating and managing operating system cloned or scripted image installs.

This IBM Redguide™ publication discusses the business benefits of using Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment and demonstrates, by means of customer scenarios, how to implement a highly efficient Image Management System with Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment provides significant IT cost savings and business operating efficiencies that ensure the strategic advantage of your business. The following section discusses these benefits.

Decreases the time required to perform a PC installTivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment automates many of the tasks required for PC installations and can reduce the time it takes to perform an install from 4 hours to less than 1 hour, on average.

Decreases the time required to perform a server install Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment automates many of the tasks required for server installations and can reduce the time it takes to perform an install from 8 hours to less than 2 hours, on average.

Incident and Problem ManagementTivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment allows Incident and Problem Management staff to respond more quickly and effectively by providing accurate inventory and configuration information, and enabling remote distribution of crucial updates.

Decreases the labor hours required for a rebuild Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment automates the installation of the core OS patches and initially installed software. This greatly improves the speed and reliability of the system build, while lowering the time and expense normally associated with new system builds as well as existing system rebuilds.

© Copyright IBM Corp. 2009. All rights reserved. 1

Availability risk mitigation (increased availability) IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment provides the ability to quickly return a damaged system / OS to its original state or bring up a new system when needed. This capability will help ensure systems are available when they are needed.

Device configuration life cycle

Every facet of IT these days seems to have a life cycle management strategy, process, or best practice, including asset life cycle management, software life cycle management, user account life cycle management, and storage life cycle management, to name a few. What they all have in common is that, through collective experience, the tasks normally undertaken throughout the life cycle of the item in question have been identified so that they can be managed as individual tasks and as a whole cycle. It is then possible to measure these tasks, the costs involved with them, and the time they take, and improve them in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and cost.

The device configuration life cycle addresses the physical management of computers from the time they are delivered to the time they leave an organization. Device configuration life cycle management can go by different names and have tasks with different terminology, usually depending upon the vendor you are talking to; however, in essence, the main tasks or activities involved are the ones shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Tasks and activities within the device configuration life cycle

There are many product suites on the market today that can enable or automate these tasks and a few that claim to do it all. Most organizations, however, already have mature tools and processes in place for many of the tasks in the life cycle and are not about to rip out and replace their existing solution unless there is a very good business case to do so. This is where Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment offers an excellent opportunity. Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment is a stand-alone product that offers significant

Asset and Inventory Management

Software Maintenanceand Patch Management

Bare Metal OS Deployment

Software distributionBackup and RestoreApplication and Data

Software License and usage

Management

Security Configuration

Remote Control

Reporting for Critical Decision Making

Tasks and Activities within the Device Configuration Lifecycle

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integration capability, so much so that it has already been integrated with Tivoli Provisioning Manager, Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Software, and will soon be integrated with IBM Director.

The core capability of Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment is the ability to intelligently automate the deployment of operating systems. This capability extends from the many flavors of Microsoft® Windows®, through SUSE® and Red Hat Linux® to Sun™ Solaris™. The deployment of an operating system is the one item in the configuration life cycle that every single computer will definitely receive at least once and potentially more often during its working life. This is shown in the context of the Device Configuration life cycle in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Operating Systems role in the Device Configuration life cycle

Once installed, the product offers cost savings in the following areas:

� Deployment manpower: Using Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment during a deployment should significantly reduce the number of personnel and the level of skill required to deploy the computer workstations. The deployment role will become more of a box moving role as opposed to a technical role.

� The universal system profile: Through the use of a universal system profile, it is possible to have one image and a collection of driver packages for deployment to a range of hardware. The savings to be made here is in the areas of:

– Image storage space: Due to the ability Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment has to modify an image and add drivers through driver injection on the fly during an image deployment, only one image and a collection of driver packages will need storage space, as opposed to an image for every hardware model. This is true for the master server and every distributed copy in the network.

– Image maintenance: Instead of building a new image every time a new model of hardware or driver is released, all that is required is the packaging of the driver, the establishment of the rules for the deployment of that driver, and testing of the deployment and rules.

Asset and Inventory Management

Software Maintenanceand Patch Management

BARE METAL OS DEPLOYMENT

Software distributionBackup and RestoreApplication and Data

Software License and usage

Management

Security Configuration

Remote Control

Reporting for Critical Decision Making

Tasks and Activities within the Device Configuration Lifecycle

TIVOLI PROVISIONING MANAGER FOR OS DEPLOYMENT

FULL AUTOMATION

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– Image replication: Minimal images mean less time and resources are used to move those images around the network to where they are needed.

� Ease of redeployment: Once an OS is installed using Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment, redeployment is as simple as a few menu clicks in the Web console. Many organizations have a system to “automatically” reinstall an operating system. Those automatic solutions usually involve the help desk consultant talking the user, or worse, the user’s colleague, through the steps required to enter all the information needed to kick off a rebuild and then waiting the hour to hour and a half for the build to complete. In some cases, a rebuild would require a site visit by a technical staff member.

The savings that can be made here are harder to quantify, but easy to identify. Any time a user is taken away from their core responsibility to help fix a problem is a business cost. In an organization large enough, it is easy for these distractions to add up to lost man-days on a daily basis due to users being involved in helping with a fix.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment also touches other parts of the device configuration life cycle with functionality that enables the core OS deployment functionality, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Deployment enabling functionality of Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment’s core function is its ability to deploy operating systems. Included in the product are some other capabilities that enable this core function. These capabilities are:

� Software distribution

The software distribution capability gives Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment the ability to inject driver packages into an operating system during deployment and install software once the operating system has started.

ASSET AND INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

Software Maintenanceand Patch Management

Bare Metal OS Deployment

SOFTWARE DISTRIBUTIONBackup and RestoreApplication and Data

Software License and usage

Management

Security Configuration

Remote Control

Reporting for Critical Decision Making

Tasks and Activities within the Device Configuration Lifecycle

TIVOLI PROVISIONING MANAGER FOR OS DEPLOYMENT

DEPLOYMENT ENABLING FUNCTIONALITY

4 Implementing an Image Management System with Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment

� Inventory

When Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment boots a computer using PXE, it automatically scans the computer and stores this data in its database. Having the results of these scans available allows Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment to make decisions based on this data about which drivers to inject during OS deployment and which software to deploy after OS deployment.

Coupled with the enabling capabilities, Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment is able to then intelligently install a full SOE in an automated manner, completely automating the first task in the device configuration life cycle, that is, bare metal OS deployment.

Common OS deployment scenarios

The following three scenarios are typical of those in many corporate sites. The aim of these scenarios is to show how Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment can help in times of deployment and also with day to day support issues. The scenarios all assume that a corporate SOE has been developed. The common theme with all of these scenarios is that the SOE deployment component of the task at hand has become a minor part of the process. It is now a quick, simple step.

Rollout of new desktop hardware and SOE

A multinational organization decides to upgrade their workstation fleet and SOE. They enter into a contract with a large hardware supplier to supply 15,000 desktop PCs of three different specifications and 5,000 mobile computers of two different specifications.

The hardware supplier is contracted to supply the workstations directly to their final destination across three continents into 25 sites.

The organization has spent the previous 12 months developing their Vista SOE, their deployment methodology, and deploying Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment. The solution developed uses a universal system profile. The universal system profile allows them to have one image that can be deployed to every desktop computer and mobile computer. When the computers first PXE boot and contact Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment, an inventory is taken of the its components. Using this inventory or Bill of Materials (BOM), rules can be established to select the appropriate drivers to inject and software to install. For example, the drivers for a desktop computer would be different than those required by a mobile computer. Based on the model number of the computer and the PCI, Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment can inject the necessary drivers.

The organization allows a level of user level workstation customization, and although the users are supposed to store all business data in specific business systems and backed up data drives, inevitably there is data stored locally on user workstations. To avoid upsetting the users and make the workstation upgrade as seamless to the users as possible, the customization and data needs to be migrated to their new machine. This is achieved by using the Microsoft User State Migration Tool.

The deployment process for desktop computers is as follows:

� The vendor ships the computers to the site as per the deployment schedule.

� The deployment is to take place overnight. At close of business, the user state migration tool is run to back up all appropriate user settings and data.

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� The new workstation computers that have arrived that day are unboxed and physically moved to the desktops in batches of 30. When 30 workstations are plugged in, they are all powered on, network boot is selected, and the computer logs into a multicast deployment.

� The 4 GB image deployment over a 100 Mbps LAN to 30 workstations completes in 30 minutes.

� The user state migration is completed, moving the user settings back to user workstations.

In this scenario, the bulk of the work was in planning and building of a SOE. When it came time to actually deploy the computers, the work was very simple, consisting mainly of physically moving boxes and plugging them in.

With regard to the mobile computer computers, they are also shipped directly to the home office of the proposed user. A deployment resource builds them in groups just as with the desktop computers. When the user comes in to their home office to swap out their machine, the user state migration is run to move all settings and data.

Rebuild of a previously deployed user workstation

A user contacts the help desk because of issues with their workstation. The workstation is not performing properly and it seems like there may be an issue with some file corruption. The help desk consultant spends 15 minutes with the user trying to determine what the problem with the workstation is. It is apparent that there is a problem, but a diagnosis is eluding them. The help desk consultant decides that a workstation rebuild is the best way forward.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment had been previously rolled out across the enterprise a few months ago. During that rollout, a decision was made to install the RbAgent, Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment’s optional agent, onto every workstation. RbAgent gives the Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment administrator, among other things, the ability to reboot a computer and force a PXE boot.

In this support instance, after gaining agreement from the user, the help desk consultant locates the user’s computer in the management Web console and executes Deploy Now against it.

At the user’s end, the computer pops up notification that it is being rebooted for a redeployment. The computer promptly reboots and the SOE deployment commences.

Due to the fact that the computer is on a production network and it is during working hours, the bandwidth consumed during the deployment is limited to 50% of the 100 Mbps available. The 4 GB SOE is deployed in approximately 15 minutes.

Instead of having the issue with the computer escalated up through the support organization and using more time up, decisive action was taken and in less than 45 minutes the user was able to once again log in and do productive work.

Upgrade of hardware and subsequent Vista install

An organization that upgraded its desktop workstation fleet last year has decided for a variety of reasons to move to Microsoft Vista. At the time of deployment last year, they believed that 512 MB of RAM per computer would be plenty of memory for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and so now they are going to have to add another 512 MB memory module to each machine.

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Having deployed Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment for their upgrade last year, they are well placed to complete this piece of work at their four 100 workstation sites overnight at one site per night using three human resources.

The upgrade process is as follows:

� As all the workstations are already defined within Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment, it is a simple task of binding the new Vista profile and the rollout deployment scheme to all the workstations. This is done.

� After each computer is opened and has its RAM upgraded, the computer is rebooted and F12 is pressed to force a network boot.

� As the computer is bound to the SOE, the computer joins a rolling non-synchronized multicast deployment scheme. This scheme ensures maximum efficiency of concurrent data transfer but without the necessity to synchronize computers. The deployment is completed overnight as planned.

Summary

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment provides significant IT cost savings and business operating efficiencies that ensure the strategic advantage of your business. In this Redguide™ publication, we discussed these business benefits and demonstrated some scenarios, where Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment can be used as a highly efficient image management solution.

The team that wrote this Redguide publication

Vasfi Gucer is an IBM Certified Consultant IT Specialist working at the ITSO Austin Center since 1999. As an ITIL Expert, his speciality is IT Service Management.

Scott Kay is an IT Specialist working for IBM Software group in Australia since 1999. His speciality is Tivoli Business Automation tools.

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8 Implementing an Image Management System with Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment

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