Zoetrope

(Re-)Installing Linux on a bare-metal Dell Poweredge server using CD's/DVD's is so passé. Instead use your servers network card to perform a PXE-boot and install it over the network.

Since all Dell Poweredge servers come with an IPMI BMC controller you can do this remotely from the office on a server in your datacenter. This how-to covers a remote install of a Dell Poweredge 2850 with an IPMI 1.5 BMC controller. This means we will use Serial-Over-Lan console redirection through a proxy program called Solproxy. If you've got a recent Poweredge server this step is not necessary.

This post assumes you have a working RHEL5/Centos5 install to serve as your provisioning server, and your bare-metal server has a working IPMI configuration. See this post by Lone Sysadmin how to configure the BMC on a Dell Poweredge if you have an OS running on it. Else you need to configure the BMC controller in the BIOS.

Here's how you use Cobbler to manage the TFTP boot server and DHCP server, and optionally build a mirror for several distro's from installation media or rsync mirrors...

Note to self: works on Dell Poweredges using IPMI console redirection. So to attempt a PXE boot use the ESC-@ escape sequence when using the serial console.

Defined As     F1     F2     F3     F4     F5     F6     F7     F8     F9     F10    F11    F12
Keyboard Entry <ESC>1 <ESC>2 <ESC>3 <ESC>4 <ESC>5 <ESC>6 <ESC>7 <ESC>8 <ESC>9 <ESC>0 <ESC>! <ESC>@

From IPMI on Debian