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4372ch02.fm Draft Document for Review November 15, 2007 3:27 pm
48 Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment in a Retail Environment
2.4.2 Modifying the unattended profile for a dynamic host name
Some organizations have very strict computer naming conventions while others
are happy for a host to be assigned a number from a random pool. There is a lot
to be said about the pros and cons of each naming style. However, some form of
a naming standard is required in order to keep track of the different systems in
the environment. This is especially true in a large retail environment with multiple
locations and different types of machines. If a naming standard is not maintained
it may become difficult to locate a particular machine that needs repair or
determine what function the device provides. This problem only gets more
complicated in a retail environment with a central IT department that manages
several remote warehouses and stores each with many devices in each location.
Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment offers a number of ways to
register a hostname within the system:
Manually type a name into the Web console after a computer registers with
Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment, but has not yet had an image
deployed. This is fine for one or two computers but during a major deployment
it can become very laborious.
Import a list of hostnames. This is a good way to populate the host database,
especially if the computer naming convention does not rely on any
characteristic of the actual computer. Each name however must be linked
some way to a unique characteristic of a computer. This could be the MAC
address, the UUID/GUID, the serial number, or a fixed asset tag. These could
be acquired from the manufacturer with the hardware shipment. In short,
Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment must have some way of
uniquely identifying a computer to allow the match up with a pre populated
host name. The import host button is at the bottom of the Host monitor
panel.
Automatically generate a host name. Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS
Deployment has a variety of keywords that will allow the extraction of all or
part of a key hardware identifier and build it into the hostname according to a
template. This means you could incorporate all or part of the computer’s serial
number or asset number into its hostname.
Let Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment decide. Tivoli
Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment will assign a random hostname.
In our scenario, we used the ability for Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS
Deployment to automatically generate a host name with the use of keyword
variables. In order to achieve this the values in the Fixed Hosts properties can
contain special keywords or variables that are replaced by dynamic information.
This can be helpful when trying to dynamically create hostnames for systems.
Below are the supported keywords: