What is LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning?
LBMP is software that lets you remotely and natively install Linux and Windows operating systems and applications onto servers, blades, PCs, appliances and virtual machines. It can install (not just "image") Red Hat, Novell, CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Asianux, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. As a separate feature, LinMin can also do imaging (capture, restore and clone entire disks without the native OS running) to help with disaster recovery and to give you flexibility in reducing energy consumption. More info at www.linMin.com
Why would I be interested in LinMin?
If you have only a handful of systems, then LinMin probably isn't for you. However, if you find yourself frequently deploying new systems or repurposing others, and you find that it takes too much of your personal (and elapsed) time, or that sometimes mistakes just happen, then LBMP can really help you out.
How does LBMP work?
First, you install LBMP on one of your systems. Then you upload all your Linux and Windows DVDs and CDs. Finally, you create "System Roles" that you find yourself installing from DVD/CDs and configuring by hand. You can set them up for casual or volume deployments ("On the Fly" provisioning) or for pinpoint accuracy ("Fire and Forget" provisioning).
Can you give me some examples of "System Roles"?
Sure... Examples would be "Red Hat Enterprise Server 5 with JBoss", "Novell SLES 10 with SAP", "Microsoft Windows 2003 Server", "CentOS 5 Web Hosting Server", "Ubuntu classroom desktop",.
And what about "Fire and Forget" Provisioning?
First, create one or more templates (with the OS and applications you want to install), then assign each template to one or more systems, with unique MAC address, host name, nickname, password, network settings and so on:
And what About Disk Imaging?
Disk imaging is performed on systems that are powered down, then powered back up. Before the OS on the local hard disk boots the system, LinMin installs RAM-resident software that captures all disk contents and stores them on the network, or restores a system from bare metal to a prior known-good state. LinMin can also clone a system and deploy an exact image to another system with the same hardware. So if you have systems with identical hardware, you can prepare one, tune it, tweak it, then capture it and clone the other systems. The reason why this approach is very good is because all applications, services and databases are closed, ensuring maximum integrity. But it's not for every system, because it requires that the system be unavailable during the backup. Overall, it's a great complement to traditional backup and restore software which perform daily backups of selected files.
Sounds very interesting! Where do I go from here?
Very good! First, make sure that in our list of over 50 operating system and architecture combinations, you can find opeartions systems that you are currently using,
and buy this unit.
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