HP Insight Control server provisioning Manual Media Server Configuration

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Summary
Insight Control (IC) server provisioning is hosted on a virtual appliance optimized to run the IC server provisioning
application. There is not enough storage on the appliance to store the deployment software: vendor-supplied operating
system distribution files, HP-supplied operating system distribution files, captured images, and the HP Service Packs for
ProLiant (SPP). For this reason, a separate server, called the Media Server, is required in order to provision target
servers.
For more Media Server information and requirements, refer to the HP Insight Control Server Provisioning Installation
Guide. Insight Control server provisioning documentation can be found at www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol/docs.
About the Media Server
The media server is not complicated. Its only purpose is to store and serve the operating system distribution files, SPPs
and captured images using the particular protocol required by the OS Build Plans (OSBPs) or installation tool being run.
By default, IC server provisioning makes use of two different protocols for all of its OSBPs:
• The SMB (Windows file share) protocol, used for:
• All Windows operating system installations
• All operating system image capture and deploy operations
• SPP Installations
• Firmware updates
• Any other operations that require the mounting of a drive
• The HTTP protocol, used for:
• All Linux and ESXi operating system installations
NFS can be used for Linux and ESXi operating system installations, SPP installations, firmware updates, and other
functions requiring mounted drive. Using NFS requires manual setup of a Linux media server and manual changes to the
OSBPs.
How the Media Server Works with OS Build Plans
Any OSBP that requires media must know the location of that media. That information is provided to the OSBP using the
Set Media Source step, which takes as its parameter, a URI representing the location of the media to be used in that
OSBP. The URI looks something like this:
protocol://username:password@host/path#local-mount-point
where:
protocol is the protocol to use to access the media, smb, http, or nfs
username:password are the optional username and password to access the share – used for SMB
only
host is the ip address or hostname of the server
path is the path on the media server to the data
local-mount-point is the local drive or path to mount the share to (not used for http)
For more details about Set Media Source script, refer to the Insight Control server provisioning All About OS Build Plans
technical document found at www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol/docs.
Some examples of Set Media Source parameters:
smb://myuser:mypass@myhost/deployment#z