Requirements of integrating a PXE server with SCVMM 2012 R2

Requirements of integrating a PXE server with SCVMM 2012 R2

Integrating a PXE server with SCVMM helps perform bare-metal Hyper-V host deployments but there are requirements to do so.

If you want to perform bare-metal Hyper-V host deployments, integrating a Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) server with SCVMM is an option to explore. SCVMM has supported integrating PXE servers since SCVMM 2012 SP1, but there are a few requirements you need to keep in mind before integrating PXE server with SCVMM.

The first thing to understand is SCVMM only supports integrating aPXE server that is provided with Windows Deployment Services(WDS). Although you might have success in integrating third-party PXE servers with SCVMM, Microsoft won't offer support for integration or operating system deployment issues. In case you are running SCVMM 2012 R2, you must deploy WDS on a computer running Windows Server 2008 R2 or later.

It is imperative to understand that SCVMM cannot perform bare-metal installations for physical hosts residing in different IP subnets. Make sure the PXE server is running on the same subnet as the physical hosts, which must be configured for PXE boot. To ensure the PXE server has been integrated with SCVMM successfully, run the "wdsutil /get-server /show: config" command on the WDS Server. The command output should return VMMOSDProvider as the PXE provider provided by SCVMM.

Many SCVMM administrators are confused by the settings on the PXE Response tab on the WDS server. Although it seems that the "Respond to all client computers (known and unknown)" setting must be configured before SCVMM deploys operating systems onto physical hosts, that's not the case. Since SCVMM uses its own PXE provider called VMMOSDProvider, SCVMM will ignore any settings you have configured on the PXE Response property tab of the WDS server.

·    Once PXE Server is integrated with SCVMM, the bare-metal deployment of physical hosts will be handled by the SCVMM. But before you can start deploying OSes on physical hosts, ensure that you have taken the necessary steps in SCVMM.

Make sure the physical computer profiles in SCVMM have been configured. Admins also need to ensure that a sys prepped VHD/VHDX file has been stored in the SCVMM library and any required files such as hardware drivers, answer files, scripts have been copied to the SCVMM library.

In case Hyper-V hosts need to be given a static IP address during the bare-metal deployment, ensure that you have created a VM network along with a network site and a static IP address pool has been created in the SCVMM.

Courtesy: Nirmal Sharma