Sysprep in Windows 2008

One of the most often used tool of sysadmins who need to deploy large numbers of similar hardware is the sysprep tool.  This Microsoft tool anonymises key system components so that cloned machines end up unique rather than duplicates of each other which can cause a wide range issues when they are networked together.  There are many different versions of sysprep available for the various versions of windows and the different flavours of service pack which can make it a nightmare to find the correct version. 

Thankfully microsoft in their wisdom have made the process simpler since the release of Vista, by incorporating sysprep into the OS installation as standard.  Assuming you've deployed windows to the default directory you'll find the tools in c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe

The options are also much simplified, with the option of "Enter System Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)" in combination with the "Generalise" tickbox giving the required options for cloning the system.

Posted via email from Pio's work related musings

Unknown status for servers in ITAssistant

ITAssistant often seems to give unknown status to servers for no apparent reason.  The usual fix for this is just to refresh the inventory of the unknown servers (annoying but quite quick to do).

However sometimes servers go unknown and won't respond to an inventory, even if you bounce the ITAssistant services or the SNMP services on the remote server.

The first step is to try the troubleshooting tool in ITAssistant...

and run the SNMP connectivity test...

The result should show a list of SNMP agents installed on the server.  A healthy Dell Openmanage report will list the OpenManage Server Agent, plus any additional components that were selected (such as storage management.

If the OpenManage SNMP agent isn't showing you'll probably only see a couple of agents.

e.g.
1) A problem server
Connected to the agent software(s) - [broadcom, NA], [mib2, NA]
2) An OK server
Connected to the agent software(s) - [broadcom, NA], [cminventorysnmp, NA], [drac3, NA], [mib2, NA], [OpenManage Server Agent, 5.8.0], [storagemgmt, NA]

If the server responds with an output similar to the problem server (1) above, then you need to reinstall SNMP.  The good news is that this can be done without rebooting the server.

This usually requires the unzipped files for the installed service pack and the windows installation CD, so make sure you have the media available

1) Uninstall Dell OpenManage
2) Uninstall SNMP
3) Reinstall SNMP
4) Reinstall Dell OpenManage

Finally go back into ITAssistant and re-run the troubleshooting tool to make sure you get the full SNMP output for OpenManage and if this is ok, re-inventory the server in OpenManage and your unknown status should clear.

Of course if you take the opportunity to upgrade OpenManage you may find your firmware is out of date and you get a warning status, but that's a different subject...

Posted via email from Pio's work related musings