Miscellaneous Options

In the Deploy Image to Computer dashboard, you can specify a set of options to customize the deployment for your specific environment.

Use the Miscellaneous Options section of the dashboard to specify environment-specific options to be used for the deployment.

Miscellaneous options section of the Deploy Image to Computer dashboard

Use the System Tag field to set a string in the registry file to highlight something specific for that system to the IBM BigFix platform. For example, it could indicate that this system has been newly imaged. A registry entry with name SystemTag and the specified value is created under the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BigFix\EnterpriseClient\ImageInfo

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\BigFix\EnterpriseClient\ImageInfo

depending on the architecture of the machine. You can then create an action using the SystemTag registry key and its value as relevance to apply your action and reset that key as the first step of your action to prevent it from being run twice.

Note: This field is deprecated and is kept for backward compatibility only. If you want to identify computers or groups of computers in your network by assigning variables, use the Client Settings field.

You can specify Client Settings to list named variables that are assigned to the deployed computer. The values you assign can be used either as labels to identify computers with specific roles or as filters in Fixlet actions and in Fixlet relevance to exclude an action on a target. You must specify the variables in a NAME:VALUE format. If you specify multiple variables, each one must be separated by a vertical bar |.

After a deployment, you can display these values in the IBM Endpoint Manager console by selecting the specified computer, and clicking Edit Computer Settings. The settings are listed under Custom Settings.

Note: During a system migration, preexisting client settings are retained and restored in the new operating system. Using this feature, you can extend the migrated target with new client settings.

Examples of how you can use the client settings field to configure the target after a deployment are available on the BigFix wiki at this link: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Tivoli%20Endpoint%20Manager/page/Using%20the%20Client%20Settings%20field%20to%20configure%20targets%20during%20deployments.

A complete list of available client configuration (custom) settings, and a description of how to use them is available at this link: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Tivoli%20Endpoint%20Manager/page/Configuration%20Settings?section=Clients/library/cc749015%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

Select Enable Administrator to enable the Administrator account on the target system during the deployment process of captured images.

Miscellaneous options section of the Deploy Image to Computer dashboard

When you deploy images created from installation media (ISO), the Administrator user is always enabled and you must always supply the corresponding password. For further information about enabling users, see Migrate User Settings.

Setting Secure Password Transfer

If you are using BigFix version 9.0 or later on the server and clients, You can enable the encryption method by selecting Enable 9.0 Encryption in the Encryption type field. This selection requires no further actions, but the take action dialog will be filtered by the V9.0 clients, an SSL encryption which requires public and private keys to be generated, or no encryption of passwords.

If you choose to use SSL encryption and you have BigFix version 8.2, you must perform the following steps:

Select Enable SSL Encryption. If your BigFix server is at version 9.0 or later, this option does not apply.

Activate the SSL Encryption Analysis, which is located in the Setup node in the navigation tree. The SSL Encryption Analysis is needed only for encrypting actions to BigFix clients version 8.2, not for version 9.0 clients. If all clients are at version 9.0 or later, this is not necessary.
Run the Enable Encrypted Passwords task on the machines that you want to reimage using a secure password. This Fixlet can be found in the Maintenance and Configuration node of the navigation tree.
After you enable SSL encryption and choose computers to reimage, the Select Encrypted Endpoints dialog displays. In the list check the computers that you want to securely reimage, and then click reimage Computer.

Encrypted endpoints selection for reimaging

Enhanced error detection

OS Deployment modifies the boot sequence of target machines to monitor and track operations performed during capture, reimage, and bare metal deployments. This is done by hooking the master boot record (MBR) to detect and handle boot errors and other exceptions such as system crashes, startup failures, and infinite loops.

You can choose to prevent the modification of the boot sequence during these operations by checking Disable enhanced error detection.

Disabling error detection inhibits changes to the boot sequence to avoid interference with specific target settings or company policies. Checking this option does not affect the deployment process flow and result.

Mapping partitions

Click Edit Partition Mapping to choose the partition layout for the deployment. This option is enabled only for captured images with more than one partition.

In the Partition Editor, the partitions contained in the WIM image are associated with the partitions that are present on the target computer. You map the captured partitions into existing partitions and decide which target partitions to overwrite and which ones to keep.

You can maintain partitions previously created on the physical disk. These are kept even after creating the new associations.

Editing partition mappings from the partition editor

The WIM Index column identifies the partitions of the captured image, that you map to the partitions of the target machine, which are identified by Disk number and Partition Number in the corresponding columns.

The Info column displays additional information on the partition, for example, whether it is a recovery partition.

The asterisk (*) in the WIM index column indicates that this partition in the captured image was marked as bootable at capture time. If you delete this partition, the system partition is automatically set as bootable.

For example, when reimaging a target from Windows XP (default installation with single-partition), to Windows 7 (which has separate boot and system partitions), you must delete the boot partition from your captured Windows 7 image. The system partition is then automatically marked as bootable.
Deleting the bootable partition form the partition editor

Deleting the bootable partition form the partition editor

During the reimaging process, regardless of how you map the system and boot partitions, if the number of partitions in the captured image is greater than the partitions present on the target machine, the validation fails. Because the reimage process does not re-partition the target machine, you must ensure that the number of mapped partitions is not greater than the partitions defined on the target, or both the validation step and the reimaging process fail.

If the number of partitions you configure for the target is less than the actual number of partitions present on the target, the results of the validation depend on how the partitions in the image are mapped to the target disk and partition.

It is strongly recommended to reimage ensuring that the number of partitions mapped from the captured image are equal to the number of actual partitions on the target.

You can also select the dash character (-) in the WIM Index column, to avoid overwriting the target partition with the specified partition of the WIM. For example, if on a Windows XP target machine you have a data partition that you want to prevent from being overwritten, you must modify the partition mapping by selecting the dash (-) character in the WIM Index column, so that on the corresponding target partition , no partition of the WIM image is transferred, as displayed in the following panel:
modifying partitions to preserve data on the target

modifying partitions to preserve data on the target

If the target of a reimage is a UEFI machine, a separate boot partition is always available at run time, regardless of how the bootable and system partitions are mapped in the WIM.

When you are done, click Validate Mapping to validate your associations.

Note: On BIOS machines only, a maximum of four partitions (primary) are supported on the same disk. Because images are firmware independent, you can define more than four partitions on the same disk but the deployment of such an image fails on BIOS machines. This limitation does not apply to UEFI machines.