4.1. Preparing Environment¶
This section explains how to set up the environment for installation over network.
4.1.1. Installing PXE Components¶
You will need these components to set up a PXE environment:
TFTP server. This is a machine that allows your servers to boot and install Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure over the network. Any machine that can run Linux and is accessble over network can be a TFTP server.
DHCP server. This is a standard DHCP machine serving TCP/IP settings to computers on your network.
HTTP server. This is a machine serving Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure installation files over network.
You can also share Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure distribution over network via FTP (e.g., with
vsftpd
) or NFS.
The easiest way is to set up all of these on the same physical machine:
# yum install tftp-server syslinux httpd dhcp
You can also use servers that already exist in your infrastructure. For example, skip httpd
and dhcp
if you already have the HTTP and DHCP servers.
4.1.2. Configuring TFTP Server¶
This section describes how to configure the TFTP server for BIOS-based systems. For information on how to configure it for installing Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure on EFI-based systems, see the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Guide.
Do the following:
On the server, open the
/etc/xinetd.d/tftp
file, and edit it as follows:service tftp { disable = no socket_type = dgram protocol = udp wait = yes user = root server = /usr/sbin/in.tftpd server_args = -v -s /tftpboot per_source = 11 cps = 100 2 flags = IPv4 }
Once you are done, save the file.
Create the
/tftpboot
directory and copy the following files to it:vmlinuz
,initrd.img
,menu.c32
,pxelinux.0
.These files are necessary to start installation. You can find the first two in the
/images/pxeboot
directory of the Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure distribution. The last two files are located in thesyslinux
directory (usually/usr/share/syslinux
or/usr/lib/syslinux
).Create the
/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg
directory and make thedefault
file in it.# mkdir /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg # touch /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default
Add the following lines to
default
:default menu.c32 prompt 0 timeout 100 ontimeout INSTALL menu title Boot Menu label INSTALL menu label Install kernel vmlinuz append initrd=initrd.img ip=dhcp
For detailed information on parameters you can specify in this file, see the documentation for
syslinux
.Restart the
xinetd
service:# /etc/init.d/xinetd restart
If necessary, configure firewall to allow access to the TFTP server (on port 69 by default).
When running the TFTP server, you might get the “Permission denied” error. In this case, you may try to fix the problem by running the following command:
# restorecon -Rv /tftboot/
.
4.1.3. Setting Up DHCP Server¶
To set up a DHCP server for installing Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure over network, add the following strings to the dhcpd.conf
file, which is usually located in the /etc
or /etc/dhcp
directory:
next-server <PXE_server_IP_address>;
filename "/pxelinux.0";
To configure a DHCP server for installation on EFI-based systems, specify filename "/bootx64.efi"
instead of filename "/pxelinux.0"
in the dhcpd.conf
file, where /bootx64.efi
is the directory to which you copied the EFI boot images when setting up the TFTP server.
4.1.4. Setting Up HTTP Server¶
Now that you have set up the TFTP and DHCP servers, you need to make the Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure distribution files available for installation over the network. To do this:
Set up an HTTP server (or configure one you already have).
Copy the contents of your Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure installation DVD to some directory on the HTTP server (e.g.,
/var/www/html/distrib
).On the PXE server, open the
/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default
file for editing, and specify the path to the Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure installation files on the HTTP server.For EFI-based systems, the file you need to edit has the name of
/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/efidefault
or/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/<PXE_server_IP_address>
.Assuming that you have the installation files in the
/var/www/html/distrib
directory on the HTTP server with the IP address of 198.123.123.198 and theDocumentRoot
directory is set to/var/www/html
, you can add the following option to theappend
line of thedefault
file to make the Acronis Software-Defined Infrastructure files accessible over HTTP:inst.repo=http://198.123.123.198/distrib
So your default file should look similar to the following:
default menu.c32 prompt 0 timeout 100 ontimeout INSTALL menu title Boot Menu label INSTALL menu label Install kernel vmlinuz append initrd=initrd.img ip=dhcp inst.repo=http://198.123.123.198/distrib