HP Image Manager 5.0 Quick Setup Guide

HP Image Manager 5.0

Quick Setup Guide

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HP Image Manager 5.0 Quick Setup Guide

HP thin clients

First Edition (April 2009)

Document Part Number: 578372–001

Table of contents

1 Introduction

What is HP Image Manager? ............................................................................................................... 1

About This Manual ............................................................................................................................... 2

Conventions ......................................................................................................................... 2

2 Installing Image Manager Components

Server Requirements ........................................................................................................................... 3

Running the Installer Wizard ................................................................................................................ 3

Completing the Server Installation ..................................................................................................... 18

HP Image Manager Server Configuration .......................................................................................... 19

Disk Storage Required on the Server ................................................................................ 19

Configuring the License Server ......................................................................................... 19

Set The License Search Path Using An Environment Variable ......................................... 19

3 Installing and Configuring Image Manager Desktop Management Web Console

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 20

Installing the Desktop Manager Console ............................................................................................ 20

Configuring Image Manager for use with the Desktop Manager Console .......................................... 22

Modifying the client image to support Desktop Manager Console ..................................................... 23

Supported browsers for the Desktop Manager Console .................................................................... 24

4 Enabling Clients to Access Images

TFTP and DHCP Server Configuration .............................................................................................. 25

Windows ............................................................................................................................ 25

Linux .................................................................................................................................. 25

Testing the TFTP Service .................................................................................................. 26

5 Initial Client Configuration

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 27

Client Configuration ............................................................................................................................ 27

Using a Pre-Built Microsoft Windows Image ...................................................................................... 28

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Appendix A Appendix A: Troubleshooting

Unpacking and Installing/Rebooting ................................................................................................... 30

Booting the Thin Clients ..................................................................................................................... 31

Glossary ............................................................................................................................................................. 32

Index ................................................................................................................................................................... 35

1 Introduction

What is HP Image Manager?

HP Image Manager delivers operating systems and applications on-demand from your server to PCs or thin clients. The server is used as a virtual disk drive, so clients do not require a hard disk or flash memory. All application processing is done by the client.

A single software image containing the operating system, application and hardware drivers for multiple hardware platforms can be streamed on-demand to any PC or thin client—regardless of the device’s hardware configuration. PC and thin client users keep their personal configurations and settings; their data remains unique and secure on the server.

Using HP Image Manager you can easily manage multiple client images from a graphical interface representing client desktops, groups of desktops and their related hard disk images (volumes). You centrally manage images and define each client’s virtual drives in just a few mouse clicks.

Changes are made to a single image on the server

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Applications can be deployed instantly

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Images can be swapped in and out quickly

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Desktops can be re-purposed by rebooting

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Software failure gets repaired by a simple reboot

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You can think of HP Image Manager as a network storage product (a SAN product) that makes it possible to boot several clients off a single virtual drive hosted on the server.

The boot process is described as follows:

1. The client issues a PXE boot request over the network.

2. The DHCP server receives the request and responds with a DHCP response, indicating an IP

address and the address of a tftp server.

What is HP Image Manager? 1

3. The client requests a boot loader program to be downloaded from the tftp server.

4. The client executes the boot loader program which requests an virtual operating system to be

downloaded from the NVDD server.

All of the server-based services required (licensing, PXE, tftp, DHCP and NVDD) can be provided by a single server hardware platform, multiple server platforms with a single service per platform, or with multiple services distributed over multiple platforms for fault tolerance.

About This Manual

This manual describes how to install and use HP Image Manager version 5.0. It assumes that you are familiar with Microsoft Configuration Protocol (DHCP)/Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) and Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server configuration. This manual describes standard installation options for Image Manager, for use in the most likely deployment scenarios. If you have a more complex deployment you should refer to the HP Image Manager User Guide.

Conventions

The following names may be abbreviated within the text of this manual:

“HP Image Manager” may be abbreviated to "Image Manager".

“HP Image Manager Server” may be abbreviated to "Image Manager server" or "NVDD server".

“HP Image Manager Console” may be abbreviated to "Image Manager Console" or just "the Console".

“HP UbiBoot” may be abbreviated to "UbiBoot".

“HP Image Manager Client Builder” may be abbreviated to "Client Builder".

“HP Active Cloner” may be abbreviated to "Active Cloner".

The following abbreviations are also used:

“HD” for Hard Disk.

Windows® and server operating system administration, as well as Dynamic Host

“HDD” for Hard Disk Drive.

“TC” for Thin Client.

2 Chapter 1 Introduction

2 Installing Image Manager Components

Server Requirements

Operating system: Windows 2003, 2008, Linux x86 (kernel 2.6)

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NOTE: Only the x86/32–bit versions of Windows server-based components are provided. They

will run in compatibility mode on the 64–bit editions of Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 servers.

Main memory: 128 MB minimum, 512 MB or more recommended

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Processor: equivalent to Pentium III 800 or faster

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Hard drive capacity: 1.5 MB dedicated to Image Manager, plus disk space required to store the

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client hard disk image files and cache files (the default maximum cache file size is 512 MB per client)

Servers that have to serve a large number of clients should have at least 512 MB of RAM (2GB or more is recommended). It is recommended that the latest service packs, patches, updates and hotfixes are applied to the server operating system.

A server class Network Adapter is recommended for the Image Manager server network card. You should install the latest NIC (Network Interface Card) drivers for the NICs in the server, which are usually available from the NIC manufacturer's web site. These drivers are usually more efficient than the drivers shipped with Windows.

When using multiple clients booting off a single server, a performance bottleneck may occur during network and server hard drive data transfers. It is therefore recommended that you use the fastest hard drives and hard disk controllers available and that the server have as much RAM as possible to improve disk caching. Having several hard disk drives in the server can also help increase performance. If there is a RAID adapter in the server, we recommend that you use RAID 1 instead of RAID 5.

Running the Installer Wizard

You will need to run the Installer Wizard on the server (or a PC running a Windows operating system, if the server is running Linux—see note below) and then again on the client computer to install the relevant HP Image Manager software components.

Server Requirements 3

NOTE: If you want to install HP Image Manager on a server running Linux, you will need to run the

Installer Wizard on a PC running a Windows operating system, select Decompress as the Setup type, then copy the server software component files installed on the PC to the server.

1. Run the HP Image Manager Installer Wizard.

4 Chapter 2 Installing Image Manager Components

2. Click Next > to display the License Agreement screen.

Running the Installer Wizard 5

3. Read the License Agreement and, if you agree to the terms, select the I accept the agreement

option then click Next >.

This dialog box provides instructions on how to install the software.

6 Chapter 2 Installing Image Manager Components

4. Click Next > to continue.

5. Specify the directory where the software components will be installed.

6. Click Next > then select the type of installation required from the following options:

Running the Installer Wizard 7

You might need to run the installation wizard several times, depending upon your network configuration. The most basic installation is a single machine serving the PXE, TFTP, and Flexnet License server services. To perform this kind of installation, you would select Server Installation (for Windows) and follow the prompts. Where prompted, check the box to install PXE server, the Flexnet License Server and all other components. If the Image Manager server were to be installed on one machine but the license server on another machine, then you would follow the Server Installation (for Windows) installation options on the machine upon which you want to run the Image Manager and on the Flexnet License Server Service Installation panel, uncheck the Install “Flexnet License Server” Service checkbox. Then run the installation package on the machine where you want to install the license server, this time selecting Flexnet License Server installation (for Windows) from the drop-down box in the Select Components panel of the installer. The same can be done for the PXE server, using the "PXE Server installation" option.

The drop-down box for selecting the installation type determines subsequent installation wizard defaults. For a server installation, the relevant options are:

Server Installation (for Windows) This option will set the defaults for a full installation on a

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Windows operating system. To exclude specific items, either unselect them from the options window (at which time the installation type will switch to Custom installation), or page through the wizard, and deselect the item on its individual installer panel.

Flexnet License Server installation (for Windows) This option can be used to install only

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the Acresso FLEXnet License server on a Windows platform.

PXE Server installation Use this option to install only the HP IM PXE and TFTP server on a

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Windows platform

Console This option installs only the Image Manager console, which can execute on a

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Windows machine other than the server machine running Image Manager server

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