Bare Metal deployments

You can install and manage Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment PXE servers and create profiles for bare metal deployments.

Bare Metal deployments are installations of operating systems to targets that either have no operating system installed, or must be re-installed without preserving any existing data or settings.

A Bare Metal deployment normally requires the use of a PXE server. The targets that PXE boot to these servers see a menu with profiles available for deployment. For this purpose, Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment must be installed on relays in your Endpoint Management environment. The installers can be uploaded to the Bare Metal Server Management dashboard. You must install the latest version available. After the install process completes, you are ready to create the profiles used for bare metal deployments.

You can create bare metal profiles from the Image Library dashboard. These profiles are then sent and stored on the Bare Metal OS Deployment PXE server. After you upload the profiles, they are ready to be deployed to targets. Any computer that PXE boots and connects to a managed OS Deployment PXE server can select the profile from the binding menu. That profile is deployed, downloading necessary files through the BigFix infrastructure.

You can also deploy bare metal profiles to Windows targets that do not have a connection to a PXE Server by creating a network boot CD, DVD, or USB drive. These targets can boot and connect to the server directly through the boot media. For more information, see Creating Windows Deployment Media.

Bare Metal Deployment behavior on VMware targets

You can complete bare metal deployments of VMware ESXi Version 5 and later on BIOS targets. Unlike Windows and Linux targets, when the bare metal deployment completes successfully, VMware targets are automatically powered off. You must power them on manually. The BigFix Client is not installed during the deployment.