Autoinstallation Provisioning

When you have prepared an autoinstallation profile, you can autoinstall your clients.

To start autoinstallation the client must already be known to SUSE Manager. You can use bare metal provisioning to bring clients into SUSE Manager. Alternatively, you can use the SUSE Manager API.

Bare Metal Provisioning

Bare metal provisioning is supported on clients with AMD or Intel x86-64 processors, and at least 1 GB of RAM.

SUSE Manager Server uses Cobbler over TFTP to connect to bare metal clients for provisioning. Check that you have a DHCP server and that you have set the next-server configuration parameter to match the SUSE Manager server IP address or hostname.

When you have the bare metal provisioning option enabled, any bare metal client connected to the SUSE Manager network is automatically added to the organization as soon as it is powered on. The provisioning process can take a few minutes. When it is complete, the client is shut down, and it appears in the Systems list, ready to be installed.

Procedure: Provisioning Bare Metal Clients

  1. In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to Admin  Manager Configuration  Bare-metal systems.

  2. Click Enable adding to this organization.

  3. Navigate to Systems, locate your bare metal clients in the list, and click the client you want to provision.

  4. Select the Provisioning  Autoinstallation tab.

  5. Select the AutoYaST profile to use, and start the autoinstallation.

You cannot schedule autoinstallation for bare metal clients. Bare metal clients are automatically installed when they are correctly configured and powered on.

New bare metal clients are added to the organization that belongs to the administrator who enabled the bare metal feature. To change the organization clients are added to, disable the bare metal feature, log in as the administrator of the new organization, and then re-enable the feature.

You can use the system set manager (SSM) with bare metal clients. However, not all SSM features are available for bare metal clients, because they do not yet have an operating system installed. This also applies to mixed sets that include bare metal systems. All features become available to the set when all the clients in the set have been provisioned. For more information on SSM, see client-configuration:system-set-manager.adoc.

API Provisioning

You can use API calls at the command prompt to bring clients into SUSE Manager for autoinstallation.

Procedure: Provisioning Using the API

  1. At the command prompt, use the system.createSystemRecord or system.createSystemProfile API calls. In this example, replace <hw_addr> with a hardware address such as 00:25:22:71:e7:c6 and <name> with the name of your client:

    spacecmd api -- --args '["systemname", {"hwAddress": "<hw_addr>", "hostname":"<name>"}]' system.createSystemProfile

  2. In the SUSE Manager Web UI, navigate to Systems, locate your new clients in the list, and click the client you want to provision.

  3. Select the Provisioning  Autoinstallation tab.

  4. Select the AutoYaST profile to use, and start the autoinstallation. Alternatively, you can schedule the autoinstallation for a later time.

Advanced PXE Installation Configuration

If the client needs to be installed for the first time, you can use the Create PXE installation configuration option. This option creates a PXE boot configuration. When you power on the client, it boots from the network and the correct profile is selected for installation.

If the client is already managed, click Schedule Autoinstallation and Finish to start the installation.

For more information about AutoYaST, see https://doc.opensuse.org/projects/autoyast/.