# RHEL Golden Images

# OS installation and configuration with HPE Synergy Image Streamer

The bare metal RHEL worker nodes will be deployed and customized using HPE Synergy Image Streamer. This section outlines the steps required to install the host. At a high level, these steps can be described as:

1. Download the artifacts for HPE Image Streamer from the HPE GitHub site.
2. Add the artifact bundles to HPE Image Streamer.
3. Prepare a compute module for the installation of the Operating System.
4. Create a Server Profile.
5. Install and customize the Operating System.
6. Capture a Golden Image from the compute module.
7. Deploy the hosts.

# Download the artifacts for HPE Synergy Image Streamer

Red Hat Enterprise Linux bundles for HPE Image Streamer may be downloaded from https://github.com/HewlettPackard/image-streamer-rhel/tree/V4.1/artifact-bundles/.

Sample foundation artifact bundles should be downloaded from https://github.com/HewlettPackard/image-streamer-tools/tree/v4.0/foundation/artifact-bundles.

# Add the artifact bundles to HPE Image Streamer

1. From within the HPE Image Streamer interface navigate to the Artifact Bundles page.
2. From the Actions menu, Add the downloaded RHEL artifact bundle. If not already present, add the sample foundation bundle.
3. From the Actions menu, select Extract to extract the artifacts from each downloaded bundle.

# Prepare the compute module for the installation of the Operating System

1. Attach a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.* Server ISO to the iLO of a worker node host by selecting the Action menu and then Launch Console.
2. When the console launches, select Virtual Drives and then Image File CD-ROM/DVD. Browse to the location where your ISO resides and select it.

# Create a Server Profile

1. Use a Server Profile Template to deploy a new Server Profile to the worker node host you attached the ISO to in the prior step.
2. Select the new Server Profile and choose Edit.
3. Under the OS Deployment section, choose HPE-Create Empty Volume and enter a Volume Size of 30720 MB.
4. Validate the network and SAN connections exist on the host.
5. Ensure that, under boot settings, Boot mode is set to UEFI optimized and that the Primary boot device is Hard disk.
6. Click OK. It will take some time for the profile to create.
7. While waiting on profile creation to complete, select the Actions menu and then click Launch Console. Click Allow to launch the console.

# Install and customize the Operating System

1. After profile creation is completed, power on the server. From the console window, select Power Switch and then Momentary Press.

2. When the screen shown in the following figure appears, select Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.* and then hit the letter ‘e’ on the keyboard.

   

   Figure. Selecting OS to install

3. Append the following to the install kernel boot parameter: rd.iscsi.ibft=1

4. Type Ctrl-x to continue the boot process.

5. When the installer screen appears, insure you select your local language, set the date and time, keyboard layout and language support. When done, click Installation Destination.

6. At the Installation Destination screen, select Add a disk… and then choose the 30 GiB volume from HPE Image Streamer. Select Done once you have chosen this disk.

7. Under Other Storage Options, select the radio button for I will configure partitioning and then click Done.

8. At the Manual Partitioning screen, select Click here to create them automatically. This will display a new Manual Partitioning screen.

9. Highlight the /boot partition and on the right side of the page select ext4 as the File System. Click the Update Settings button.

10. Highlight the / partition and on the right side of the screen, reduce the Desired Capacity to 8 GiB and then choose ext4 as the File System. Click the Update Settings button.

11. Highlight the swap partition and on the right side of the screen, change Desired Capacity from 3000 MiB to 4092 MiB. Click the Update Settings button.

12. Click the “+” button below the list of partitions. For Mount Point, select /var from the dropdown and leave the Desired Capacity blank. This will allow the /var partition to use all remaining space.

13. At the Manual Partitioning screen, highlight the /var partition and choose /ext4 for the File System. Click Update Settings.

14. The screen should appear as shown in the following figure.

    

    Figure. Manual partitioning

15. Once you have validated the file systems and partition sizes are correct, click Done.

16. When prompted, click Accept Changes.

17. Click the Network & Hostname link. At the resulting screen, highlight Ethernet (ens3f4) and set it to ‘ON’ in the descriptor screen as in the following figure. Click Done.

    

    Figure. Network & Hostname

18. Click Begin Installation. Set a root password for the host. Do not configure extra users. Click Done.

19. Once the OS installation is complete you can reboot the host. Log on at the iLO console when the host becomes active again.

20. Configure a temporary hostname for the system

21. Configure your networking and ensure you have connectivity.

22. Register the host with Red Hat by running the following command. Enter the username and password when prompted.

    # subscription-manager register
    

23. Use Red Hat subscription manager to register your system to give you access to the official Red Hat repositories. Use the subscription-manager register command as follows.

    # subscription-manager auto-attach 
    

24. Enable the required repos:

    # subscription-manager repos \
    --enable=rhel-7-server-rpms \
    --enable=rhel-7-server-extras-rpms 
    

25. Update the host by running the following command.

    # yum update
    

26. Copy the SSH public key from your Ansible box. This will allow your Ansible node to SSH without the need for a password to all the bare metal REHL nodes.

# ssh-copy-id root@<IP of your bare metal node>

27. Gracefully shut down the host.

# shutdown -h now