Managing Bare Metal Targets

If you install the Management Extender for Bare Metal targets on your OS Deployment Server, you can manage your targets through the BigFix console after the targets PXE boot to their local server. You can complete the following actions:

Change Bare Metal target settings before a deployment using the corresponding task (350). See Changing target settings before deployments.
Set or remove network configuration settings for a target, see Changing Bare Metal Target Network Configuration Settings.
Schedule the deployment of profiles on Bare Metal targets. For more information, see Deploying a bare metal profile from the BigFix console.
Capture and restore user state of Windows targets, see Capturing and restoring user state of Windows targets.
Wipe Bare Metal target disks. For more information, see Wiping target disks.
Reset the status of a bare metal target on the associated bare metal server, see Reset the status of a bare metal target

Target inventory

To retrieve information on the bare metal targets, you must activate the Bare Metal Target Information analysis. For each target, you can view the following properties:

Computer model
Computer serial number
Computer Status (ok, error, or empty if the target is new)
Hostname (this property is set with the Change Bare Metal Target Settings task.
Universal Unique Identifier (UUID).
Any network parameters defined with the Change Bare Metal Target Network Configuration Settings task.

Note:

In the Subscribed Computers view, targets that successfully completed a PXE boot are identified by the agent type attribute set to Proxy - Bare Metal Extender. For each target, the listed agent version refers to the agent installed on its local Bare Metal Server.

Changing target settings before deployments

Run the Change Bare Metal Target Settings task ( ID 350) to set or remove settings for a selected target. The values you specify with this task will affect the partition mappings and hostname rule values specified in the bare metal profile for the selected target.

Important: Before you run this task, ensure that your Bare Metal OS Deployment servers are at Version 7.1.1.20 or later.

Hostname: The value you specify becomes the computer name of the bare metal target on which you run the task. For Windows targets, the name must be a maximum of 15 characters or else the deployment fails. If you have set this property, the value specified in the task overrides the value specified in the Hostname Rule field of the Bare Metal profile.
Partition mapping: You can resize one or more partitions for a specific target. The partitions you resize must exist in the partition mappings section of the bare metal profile that you are deploying to the target. At deployment time, the resizing information is checked against the partitions in the profile, and the partition layout for the target is updated accordingly. If you specify a partition that does not match the partitions found in the profile that you are deploying, the information in this field is ignored, and the partition layout of the target will be the one specified in the profile. The syntax is [resize <mount point> <size in MB>].
For example, to resize the D partition to 1 gigabyte for a Windows target specify resize D 1024. To resize /usr and /root for a Linux target, specify resize /usr 1024 /root 1024

Note: If you select the Prompt end user for properties option in the bare metal profile, the properties specified in this task are displayed at the target at deployment time. You can accept them or change them as required.

Forcing network boot on targets

Run the Force Network Boot Task (ID132) on a running target to boot it on the network. This action changes the boot order of the target so that it boots from the network and not from the operating system. This action is performed only once.

Deleting bare metal target entries

When you deploy a bare metal profile on a target discovered through the Management Extender for Bare Metal targets, a BigFix client is installed on the target during the deployment process and a new computer entry is added in the BigFix database with agent type set to Native For this reason, duplicate entries are visible in the Subscribed Computers list for the same physical computer. The value specified for the DeviceReportExpirationIntervalHours in the settings.json configuration file of the Management Extender for Bare Metal Targets determines the expiration period for the bare metal target, after which the corresponding entry can be permanently deleted from the database. You can delete the expired bare metal target entries manually from the console or by using the BES computer remover tool. You can download the tool and related documentation from the BigFix wiki at this link: https://bigfix-wiki.hcltechsw.com/wikis/home?lang=en-us#!/wiki/BigFix%20Wiki/page/BES%20Computer%20Remover. To change the Management Extender for Bare Metal Targets Plug-in configuration settings, see Changing the plug-in settings.