IBM REDP-4372-00 User Manual

Draft Document for Review November 15, 2007 3:27 pm REDP-4372-00

Front cover

Tivoli Provisioning Manager
for OS Deployment
in a Retail Environment

Specifically catered for IT professionals
working in the retail industry

Describes frequently used
scenarios

Cookbook for getting
started

ibm.com/redbooks

Vasfi Gucer

Leif Egeholm Nielsen

David Kwock

John Hardegree

Redpaper

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International Technical Support Organization

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment in a
Retail Environment

January 2008

REDP-4372-00

4372edno.fm Draft Document for Review November 15, 2007 3:27 pm

Note: Before using this information and the product it supports, read the information in

“Notices” on page vii.

First Edition (January 2008)

This edition applies to Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment Version 5.1 Fixpack 3.

This document created or updated on November 15, 2007.

© Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 2008. All rights reserved.

Note to U.S. Government Users Restricted Rights -- Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP
Schedule Contract with IBM Corp.

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Contents

Notices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Trademarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix

The team that wrote this paper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Become a published author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Comments welcome. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Chapter 1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Target audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.1.1 Definition of roles and skills. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 The retail environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.3 The role and importance of IT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.4 Operating systems on Point-of-sale devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.5 Introducing Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.6 Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment in retail environments . . . 8

1.7 Typical scenarios in a system life cycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1.7.1 First-time installations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.7.2 Preparing a system for use as a master image. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.7.3 Deploying to multiple systems from a master image. . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

1.7.4 Re-deploying to a specific system to resolve a problem. . . . . . . . . . 12

1.7.5 Backing up and restoring an entire system to resolve a problem . . . 13

1.8 Introducing the LAB environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Chapter 2. First-time installations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

2.2 Creating an unattended profile for Windows XP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2.2.1 Copying the media files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2.2.2 Slipstream Windows XP Service Pack 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.2.3 Creating the unattended profile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.3 Adding drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

2.3.1 Downloading and unpacking the drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

2.3.2 Creating a software package for device drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

2.4 Deploying to a pristine system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

2.4.1 Creating a deployment scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

2.4.2 Modifying the unattended profile for a dynamic host name. . . . . . . . 48

2.4.3 Client Machine Boot and Deploy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

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Chapter 3. Mass-Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

3.1 Creating a cloned profile for Windows XP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

3.1.1 Preparing the donor system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

3.1.2 Capturing the system image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

3.1.3 Configuring the system profile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

3.2 Adding support for different hardware types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

3.2.1 The principle of device driver injection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

3.2.2 Software Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

3.2.3 Deployment Scheme Parameter Wizard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

3.3 Deploying the XP cloning profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Chapter 4. Redeployment scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

4.1 Reasons for redeployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

4.2 Redeployment from the local hard drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.2.1 Create a deployment scheme that supports redeployment. . . . . . . . 86

4.2.2 Create a boot menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

4.2.3 Process for local redeployment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

4.3 Redeployment from the server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

4.3.1 Redeployment Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Chapter 5. System image snapshots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

5.1 Introducing the POS plug-in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

5.2 Installing the POS plug-in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

5.2.1 Obtaining the POS package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

5.2.2 Installing the POS plug-in from the Windows GUI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

5.2.3 Installing the POS plug-in from the command line . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

5.2.4 Verifying the POS plug-in installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

5.3 Remotely controlling POS terminals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

5.3.1 Wake on LAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

5.3.2 Power off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

5.4 Creating Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

5.4.1 Performing a POS terminal backup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

5.4.2 Managing the list of backups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

5.4.3 Restoring a POS backup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

5.5 Switching hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Chapter 6. Real world deployment scenarios. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

6.1 Large environment considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

6.1.1 Managing development and production environments . . . . . . . . . . 126

6.1.2 Expanding from one to multiple servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

6.2 Replicating software and configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

6.2.1 Built-in file replication service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

6.2.2 Command line method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

6.2.3 Profile migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

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6.3 Network Bandwidth Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

6.3.1 Unicast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

6.3.2 Multicast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

6.3.3 Multicast with synchronization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Appendix A. Alternate boot sequence on POS systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

When to boot from hard drive and from network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Forcing a POS system to boot into PXE mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Preparing alternate boot sequence for Wake on LAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Appendix B. Additional material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Locating the Web material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Using the Web material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

System requirements for downloading the Web material . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

How to use the Web material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Related publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

IBM Redbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Other publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Online resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

How to get Redbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Help from IBM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Contents v

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vi Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment in a Retail Environment

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Notices

This information was developed for products and services offered in the U.S.A.

IBM may not offer the products, services, or features discussed in this document in other countries. Consult
your local IBM representative for information on the products and services currently available in your area.
Any reference to an IBM product, program, or service is not intended to state or imply that only that IBM
product, program, or service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program, or service that
does not infringe any IBM intellectual property right may be used instead. However, it is the user's
responsibility to evaluate and verify the operation of any non-IBM product, program, or service.

IBM may have patents or pending patent applications covering subject matter described in this document.
The furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents. You can send license
inquiries, in writing, to:

IBM Director of Licensing, IBM Corporation, North Castle Drive, Armonk, NY 10504-1785 U.S.A.

The following paragraph does not apply to the United Kingdom or any other country where such
provisions are inconsistent with local law: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION

PROVIDES THIS PUBLICATION "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF NON-INFRINGEMENT,
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some states do not allow disclaimer
of express or implied warranties in certain transactions, therefore, this statement may not apply to you.

This information could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically made
to the information herein; these changes will be incorporated in new editions of the publication. IBM may
make improvements and/or changes in the product(s) and/or the program(s) described in this publication at
any time without notice.

Any references in this information to non-IBM Web sites are provided for convenience only and do not in any
manner serve as an endorsement of those Web sites. The materials at those Web sites are not part of the
materials for this IBM product and use of those Web sites is at your own risk.

IBM may use or distribute any of the information you supply in any way it believes appropriate without
incurring any obligation to you.

Information concerning non-IBM products was obtained from the suppliers of those products, their published
announcements or other publicly available sources. IBM has not tested those products and cannot confirm
the accuracy of performance, compatibility or any other claims related to non-IBM products. Questions on
the capabilities of non-IBM products should be addressed to the suppliers of those products.

This information contains examples of data and reports used in daily business operations. To illustrate them
as completely as possible, the examples include the names of individuals, companies, brands, and products.
All of these names are fictitious and any similarity to the names and addresses used by an actual business
enterprise is entirely coincidental.

COPYRIGHT LICENSE:

This information contains sample application programs in source language, which illustrate programming
techniques on various operating platforms. You may copy, modify, and distribute these sample programs in
any form without payment to IBM, for the purposes of developing, using, marketing or distributing application
programs conforming to the application programming interface for the operating platform for which the
sample programs are written. These examples have not been thoroughly tested under all conditions. IBM,
therefore, cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

© Copyright IBM Corp. 2008. All rights reserved. vii

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Trademarks

The following terms are trademarks of the International Business Machines Corporation in the United States,
other countries, or both:

Redbooks (logo) ®
DB2®
IBM®

The following terms are trademarks of other companies:

Snapshot, and the Network Appliance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Network Appliance,
Inc. in the U.S. and other countries.

Java, JDBC, Ultra, and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United
States, other countries, or both.

Microsoft, Windows, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States,
other countries, or both.

i386, Intel, Intel logo, Intel Inside logo, and Intel Centrino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of
Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States, other countries, or both.

Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both.

Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

NetView®
Redbooks®
SurePOS™

Tivoli Enterprise™
Tivoli®

viii Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment in a Retail Environment

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Preface

Retail environments, like many other industries, are continously seeking ways to
reduce costs and improve their competitive advantages.

One area where cost reduction is at play is with the IT deployed in the
warehouses. Because this environment is so distributed, significant cost savings
can be achieved if the hardware and software can be maintained without having
to be physically present in the warehouse.

This IBM® Redpaper presents the IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS
Deployment software product as a solution to help customers reduce costs for
deploying operating systems to point-of-sale devices in a highly distributed
environment.

Additionally, the Redpaper introduces a solution specifically developed for IBM
Technical Support, to reduce the recovery time whenever a software or hardware
failure requires a system to be re-deployed.

The audience of the Redpaper are IT managers in the retail sector and technical
support people in areas with point-of-sale or kiosk systems. Technical support
people in other highly distributed environments may also benefit from the
information herein.

The team that wrote this paper

This paper was produced by a team of specialists from around the world working
at the International Technical Support Organization, Austin Center.

Vasfi Gucer is an IBM Certified Consultant IT Specialist at the ITSO Austin
Center. He started his IBM career as a Network Specialist in 1989.. He has over
18 years of experience providing technical support across a variety of IBM
products and technologies, including communications, network and systems
management. For the last ten years Vasfi has been working for IBM ITSO, where
he has been writing IBM Redbooks® and creating and teaching workshops
around the world on a variety of topics. In this position, he has also worked on
various Tivoli® customer projects as a Systems Architect and Consultant. He
holds a Master’s degree in Engineering.

Leif Egeholm Nielsen is a Certified IT Architect in Operations Architecture at
IBM Denmark. He currently holds a position as account architect for the

© Copyright IBM Corp. 2008. All rights reserved. ix

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Carlsberg account. He has 15 years of experience in the IT business and 10
years with Tivoli and Software Distribution. He holds a bachelor degree in
mechanical engineering. Leifs areas of expertise include operational
architectures, systems management, software distribution, and Tivoli software.
Leif has previously participated in several ITSO residencies related to IBM Tivoli
Inventory and Software Distribution products.

David Kwock is an IT Specialist in the United States. He has 7 years of
experience in IT Service Management field. He has worked at IBM for 1 year. His
areas of expertise include business automation, Service Oriented Architecture,
System P and Linux®. He has written extensively on IT Service Management
and Service Oriented Architecture. David has also spoken at IBM Executive
Summits and Gartner conferences on the topics of IBM Service Management
and Service Oriented Architecture.

John Hardegree is a senior IT Specialist working for IBM Global Services in the
US. He has worked with Tivoli products since 1993 and was Tivoli Enterprise™
Certified in 1999. John holds a degree in A.S Degree in Electronics Technology
and has over twenty years of experience in software/firmware design and
systems management technical support. He spent almost four years with an IBM
business partner as a Tivoli Professional Services consultant, has developed and
taught several Tivoli courses and was the author of the TME10 List FAQ. He
currently works on the midrange monitoring team for the State of Texas account.

Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this project:

Wade Wallace
International Technical Support Organization, Austin Center

Wayne Correa, Portfolio Manager, Retail Industry
IBM Global Services, North Carolina, USA

David H. Fritz
Global Technology Services
Technology and Business Integration, IBM Austin

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Become a published author

Join us for a two- to six-week residency program! Help write a book dealing with
specific products or solutions, while getting hands-on experience with
leading-edge technologies. You will have the opportunity to team with IBM
technical professionals, Business Partners, and Clients.

Your efforts will help increase product acceptance and customer satisfaction. As
a bonus, you will develop a network of contacts in IBM development labs, and
increase your productivity and marketability.

Find out more about the residency program, browse the residency index, and
apply online at:

ibm.com/redbooks/residencies.html

Comments welcome

Your comments are important to us!

We want our papers to be as helpful as possible. Send us your comments about
this paper or other IBM Redbooks in one of the following ways:

򐂰 Use the online Contact us review Redbooks form found at:

ibm.com/redbooks

򐂰 Send your comments in an e-mail to:

[e-mail]

򐂰 Mail your comments to:

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Dept. HYTD Mail Station P099
2455 South Road
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601-5400

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xii Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment in a Retail Environment

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1

Chapter 1. Introduction

This chapter introduces the retail environment, the technical challenges retail
environments pose and how Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment can
be used to solve some of them.

This chapter also introduces realistic POS provisioning scenarios and outlines
the environment used to produce this paper.

Readers already familiar with the retail environment may skip most of this
chapter but for a full understanding of the scenarios it is recommended you read
sections 1.7, “Typical scenarios in a system life cycle” on page 10 and 1.8,
“Introducing the LAB environment” on page 13.

© Copyright IBM Corp. 2008. All rights reserved. 1

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1.1 Target audience

This Redpaper is written specifically with IT people who work in the retail sector
in mind. However, many of the topics and scenarios can easily be mapped to
traditional workstation environments and therefore also be of benefit to IT
professionals working with OS deployments outside the retail environments.

Since most of the content is technical in nature, a minimum of technical
understanding is required. Experience with automated deployment of operating
systems is highly recommended but not required. Understanding the principles
involved in automated software distribution will be helpful.

Note: This Redpaper is based on Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS
Deployment V5.1 with Fixpack 3. Some of the screenshots may look slightly
different from the ones in previous ITSO publications because of this.

1.1.1 Definition of roles and skills

Throughout the scenarios and examples the following defintions are used for
different roles.

򐂰 POS user - or simply end user

The POS user refers to the person using the POS system. For a cash register
this will be the cashier, for self-checkout systems or kiosks this will be a
customer. It is not assumed that the POS user will have any IT skills as such
and normally this person will not be involved in any processes except
experiencing a problem and notify someone of the problem.

򐂰 Local super user - or simply super user

Every store, warehouse or super market should have at least one person to
fulfill this role. The super user is not an IT professional, but has some
understanding about the underlying IT and is capable of communicating with
the IT professionals in helpdesk etc.

򐂰 Central IT

Central IT refers the IT professionals located centrally at one location,
physically distant from the production POS systems. There is no distinction in
this Redpaper between IT professional at the helpdesk, server support,
development etc.

򐂰 Field Technician

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This role covers an external IT professional that is called in to a store to
perform on-site repairs of systems. This include a service technician from IBM
Technical Support.

1.2 The retail environment

The retail environment comprises every type of store, from the apparel store with
one or two cash registers, to a large super market chain with thousands of stores
each having a variety of cash registers, self-checkout lanes and kiosk systems
for various purposes.

A typical IT environment for a department store is shown in Figure 1-1 on page 4.

The main application servers are located in a data center, most likely with a
redundant setup, possibly even made site-redundant. This is the backend system
for all transactions and will normally have interfaces to other systems used for
logistics, finance, payroll, ordering and so forth.

In each warehouse is a local server that handles transactions from POS systems
and forwards the transactions to the central server. This setup enables a
warehouse to continue operation even if the network connections are interrupted
for shorter periods of time. Typically, this server is also used for local
customizations such as the text on the printed receipts, local discounts etc.
Larger warehouses will probaly have this system setup in a redundant
configuration. Even if the applications are configured to use the central server in
case the local server is unavailable, there may be performance requirements that
justify such setup.

Alone in the area of providing a high level of availability for the application servers
required for purchase transactions lies several technical challenges. These are
mainly part of the network, servers and applications and are not the scope of this
Redpaper. Much of this information can be found from other sources, including
the IBM Redbook Enabling the On Demand Store with IBM Store Integration
Framework, SG24-6698.

Chapter 1. Introduction 3

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Figure 1-1 A typical IT environment for a department store

IBM POS systems are very much like standard Intel®-based workstations. There
is a motherboard with an Intel x86 processor, memory, graphics adapter and
network interface card. In addition there is also one or more USB interfaces.
However, there are also some diferences: A POS system typically has several
peripheral devices attached, including but not limited to;

򐂰 A keyboard, specifically designed for the point-of-sale system
򐂰 A touch screen
򐂰 A barcode scanner
򐂰 A scale
򐂰 A sensor (to verify the customer puts the item in the bag)
򐂰 A credit-card reader with signature type pad or pin code keyboard
򐂰 A cash-drawer
򐂰 A printer for receipts

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These peripherals are connected via special connectors and via USB interfaces
which may be carrying the standard 5 Volts or powered USB with 12 or 24 Volts.

The system typically runs only one application which is developed and/or tailored
specifically to serve the purpose of the system. Under normal operation the end
user will only use the application and not think about or have access to the
underlying operating system.

By separating the point-of-sales systems from any traditional workstations in a
store it is possible to limit the risk of infecting the point-of-sales systems with
viruses, worms and other malware. The separation is done using VLANs, routers
and/or firewalls depending on the required security level.

The retail environment is highly distributed, especially large retail chains, which
may have one or more data centers and a significant number of stores distributed
across the country or the world. The IT skills in a store is limited, resulting in a
strong focus on standardization and on remote managability.

The typical lifetime of a point-of-sale system is five to seven years, which is
somewhat more than a normal office workstation, be it a desktop or a notepad.
During the lifetime of a point-of-sale system, the operating system is unlikely to
change more than one or two times. Applications may be updated one or two
times a year.

1.3 The role and importance of IT

For any store or warehouse, the point-of-sale system is essential for business.
This is where goods are exchanged for money. Without the capability to handle
these transactions automatically, a significant amount of back-office work is
required and some parts of the transactions may not even be possible, such as
payments by use of credit cards and printing out receipts.

It’s easy to visualize what happens if a store suddenly has a limited capability of
processing sales: The remaining lanes will have growing queues, causing
reduced customer satisfaction, and if the situation happens more than once in a
quarter, some customers will probably place their business elsewhere.

For this reason, most larger warehouses have several layers of redundancy. First
of all, there are usually more lanes than needed except for hollidays and
seasonal occasions. Additionally, the network is typically kept isolated from
networks used by regular workstations, and made redundant so half the POS
systems are connected to one swtich and the other half to another. Application
servers should also be set up for high availability, both with respect to
independency in an individual store, and with the capability to fail over to a

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centrally located application server if the local application server fails. There are
many wariations possible, however, they are not the topic for this Redpaper.

It is important to note that most larger warehouses have a surplus of POS
systems which reduces the effects of one or a few systems being out of order.
Smaller stores or restaurants are more likely to be affected, even if one system is
out of order, since they may only have a total of two or three POS systems.

1.4 Operating systems on Point-of-sale devices

Not all operating systems are suitable for point-of-sales devices. A typical POS
system has a lot of special devices that require drivers which are not widely
available on all platforms. Also, the IT department may want to prevent the user
from getting access to anything but the POS application which require an
operating system with lockdown features.

The most common operating systems for point-of-sale systems include, but are
not limited to:

򐂰 Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
򐂰 Microsoft Windows 2000 Workstation
򐂰 WEPOS; Microsoft Windows Embedded for Point-of-services
򐂰 IRES; IBM Retail Environment for Suse Linux for POS

Different distributions of Linux also exist.

Older environments may also include systems running PC-DOS 2000.

For the scenarios used throughout this Redpaper we will only use Windows XP.
For information about deploying Windows 2000 and Linux, please consult the
IBM RedBook Deployment Guide Series: Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS
Deployment V5.1, SG24-7397.

1.5 Introducing Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment

The IBM Tivoli software products that have previously provided capabilities for
installation of operating systems on bare metal systems include NetView®
Distribution Manager and Tivoli Configuration Manager. These products have
been suceeded by the IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager product which natively
does not include similar features.

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In 2006, IBM purchased a Swiss company called Rembo Technology SaRL. With
this, IBM also acquired the Rembo software products to fill in this gap; Rembo
Toolkit and Rembo Auto-Deploy.

The Rembo Toolkit was added to Tivoli Provisioning Manager v5.1 to provide
native image management. The Rembo Auto-Deploy product was rebranded to
Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment is a software product that
provides image management. It captures images of systems which have been
prepared for mass-distribution, provides various ways of customizing and
adjusting these images and provides a mechanism for distributing them to
multiple systems.

During the distribution of an image, Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS
Deployment can identify the target system and automatically inject drivers that
fits the particular system. A captured image can therefore be used for distribution
to different hardware platforms. These processes are described in Figure 1-2 on
page 8, which also clarifies some of the definitions used throughout the book:

򐂰 Unattended profile

Profile is the term used for an element containing an operating system that
can be deployed. An unattended profile means the operating system is based
on the original installation files and the deployment will perform a true
installation, going through all the steps a normal installation would, but using
a script to automate all or most of the process.

򐂰 Cloning profile

A profile is the term used for an element containing an operating system that
can be deployed. A cloning profile means the operating system is based on
an already installed system that has been prepared for mass distributions
(cloning). For performance reasons this is the most often used method for
mass distributions.

򐂰 Software Package

This must not be confused with software packages as defined in other
software distribution products such as IBM Tivoli Configuration Manager. In
Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment a software package can only
be deployed as part of the deployment of an operating system in either an
unattended or a cloning profile. A software package typically contains
additional device drivers or files that need to be copied to the target, optionally
executing a batch script or an executable file as part of it. Software packages
can also be used to run unattended installations using MSI software
packages.

򐂰 Deployment Schemes

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The deployment of a profile can be customized using a deployment scheme.
The default deployment scheme will be suficient for most deployments, but in
some cases there may be reasons to adjust the deployment to optimize
network bandwidth.

򐂰 Configuration

Every profile has a configuration, which includes the attributes to apply when
deploying the profile.

Figure 1-2 The main processes for a Windows XP mass distribution

1.6 Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment in retail environments

From an architectural point of view, a point-of-sale system consist of different
layers of software. This is illustrated in Figure 1-3 on page 9. With Tivoli

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Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment it is possible to maintain the
deployment and re-deployment of Operating System with suitable drivers, a
Java™ Runtime environment and the applications to run directly on the operating
system or on top of the Java Runtime environment. The applications should in
this case be considered static, that is; the application will not during deployment
receive any modifications to reflect the specific system it is installed to.

Data updated at regular intervals, including for example weekly or daily pricelists
or special content to print on receipts, are not suitable for deployment via Tivoli
Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment. This would require frequent, perhaps
weekly updates to the image. Instead, this should be automated using other
systems or scripts (which may be part of the static data that can be deployed
using Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment).

Realtime dynamic data consist mainly of transactions. For obvious reasons,
these should never be of concern to a specific point-of-sale system. Transactions
should always be handled by an enterprise application server with capabilities to
perform roll back and roll forward, and preferably be based on a messaging
system between POS systems and transaction servers.

Figure 1-3 Software on a POS system from an architectural point of view

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1.7 Typical scenarios in a system life cycle

Much has been written about the system life cycle. Figure 1-4 on page 10 shows
some of the elements that are part of the system life cycle. Some of these
elements can be supported using the Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS
Deployment product while others will require additional software, tools and
processes.

Figure 1-4 POS System Lifecycle

The remaining chapters of this paper will, through selected scenarios, show how
the Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment product can be used to
accomodate the following system life cycle tasks that are carried out at regular
intervals in any retail environment;

򐂰 First time installations using unattended installation
򐂰 Preparing a master image for mass distribution
򐂰 Deploying to multiple systems from a master image
򐂰 Re-deploying to a specific system to resolve a problem
򐂰 Backing up and restoring an entire system to resolve a problem

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1.7.1 First-time installations

There are typically three situations where a first-time installation is required: One
is when the initial environment is being established and another is when a
solution already exists, but the current hardware is being replaced with new.
These are commons situations in any IT environment and both cases can
generally be managed in the same way. The third situation is when a new
operating system is introduced, such as a change from Microsoft Windows to
Linux, or an upgrade from Windows to Vista.

In a traditional IT department with PCs, the obvious approach may be to insert
the CD with the operating system and proceed from there. However, there are
some pitfalls with this method in the retail environment:

򐂰 Normally the point-of-service system does not have built-in floppy or CD-ROM

drives. This can of course easily be fixed in the IT department via a
USB-attached CD-ROM drive, but it does require some additional work.

򐂰 Some of the systems require specific hardware drivers to be installed during

the operating system installation. This requires modifications of the default
installation media or network drive.

򐂰 Without any additional automation method this approach will not be very

practical with hundreds or thousands of POS systems in the production
environment.

This is where Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment comes at play.
Adding a new hardware driver to an existing operating system is simply a matter
of downloading the driver from the provider, unpack and create a software
package with the drivers. Then the system is ready for initial deployment.

1.7.2 Preparing a system for use as a master image

Once a system has been prepared with the correct drivers and optionally had
one or more applications installed and configured on it, it is ready to serve as a
master image.

Before the system can be captured as an image, a final set af tasks must first be
completed. For a Windows system this typically includes some cleanup and
deletion of user-specific data, followed by a special utility called sysprep, which
prepares the system for mass-distribution. The sysprep is the very last step to
complete because it includes shutting down the system in a special state that is
intended for mass distribution.

On Linux systems, there are similar cleanup activities but no special utilities to
prepare the system for mass-distribution.

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Once the installation has been prepared, the system must be booted from the
network and connect to the Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment
server, From here, the installation can be used to create a new profile.

1.7.3 Deploying to multiple systems from a master image

Once the profile is on the Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment server
and necessary additional adjustments, scripts and drivers have been added, it is
ready for deployment to other systems.

Without any further changes, the master image can be used for deployments to
systems with same hardware. In order to distribute to systems with other
hardware, it may be necessary to inject new drivers. This is done by defining
software packages with the drivers and define bindings or rules for which drivers
to inject on which systems.

1.7.4 Re-deploying to a specific system to resolve a problem

Normally if a software or hardware related problem occurs, the IT organization
will attempt to troubleshoot and fix the problem. This can be a time consuming
effort. The retail environment varys significantly from the traditional office
environments where PCs are used for administrative tasks. Imagine a small
super market or store with three or four cash registers. If one POS station is not
available during busy hours, the line of customers could quickly grow, resulting in
unhappy customers and eventually loss of business when disgruntled customers
leave the store without making their purchases.

For the retail environment, it is therefore imperative that a failed system be
brought back into operation as quickly as possible. Tivoli Provisioning Manager
for OS Deployment provides several tools to assist in doing this, depending on
the particular situation:

򐂰 If the failure is a local software error, the quickest way to get a system back

online is a local redeployment. This feature requires that a copy of the
installed image exist in a hidden partition on the hard drive, and that any local
dynamic data can be automatically retrieved from a central server after
redeployment.

򐂰 If the failure is the result of a malfunctioning hard drive, and a replacement

drive is quickly installed, a new operating system can be deployed from a
local Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment server within 20-30
minutes. As in the previous case any dynamic data will need to be recovered
or recreated after OS redeployment.

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1.7.5 Backing up and restoring an entire system to resolve a problem

If the system contains dynamic data, a new POS plug-in utility for the Tivoli
Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment product can be used to create
image-backups of individual systems for faster restores. Obviously a restore can
only recover the data that were included in the backup. If the dynamic data are
weekly or daily price updates this should be managed by running daily backups.

The POS plug-in will be covered in Chapter 5, “System image snapshots” on
page 95.

1.8 Introducing the LAB environment

In order to test realistic scenarios, a small environment has been established for
the production of this Redpaper. The systems used throughout the scenarios are
depicted in Figure 1-5 on page 13.

Figure 1-5 The LAB environment used for this Redpaper

The environment consist of two Intel based servers running Microsoft Windows
2003 Server and Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment. One (BERLIN)
represents a development and testing environment, while the other (NICE) is
used to represent a production environment in a store. There is also an

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additiononal server (not shown) that provides DHCP services to our simulated
environment.

Four types of POS devices exist in the simulated environment as well, each of
which is a unique model, which helps to demonstrate Tivoli Provisioning
Manager for OS Deployment’s capability of identifying different types of hardware
and injecting the right drivers for each. In a large super market, for instance, it
would not be unrealistic to have different types of hardware performing the same
functions. The IT department would then typically have at least one of each
hardware type.

The real-world IT environment that we are trying to simulate with the lab
environment is depicted in Figure 1-6 on page 15.

Note that the environment does not include any application servers or other
management systems. There would most likely be at least one application server
in each warehouse, and several centrally located application servers in an actual
enterprise, but management of these servers falls outside the scope of this
paper. Likewise, there would normally be servers for systems management, such
as monitoring and remote administration, but these are also outside our scope.

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Figure 1-6 A real-world retail IT environment

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