jonathanml86

Q: NetRestore Image

Hello all,

 

So I've set up a server environment to provide a Mac Reseller the ability to use an image capture of a clean/fresh install of Yosemite 10.10.4.

 

I chose to use the NetRestore Image process within the System Image Utility service > saved to an SSD in my OWC Thunderbolt - 4 bay drive. I did this process 4 x's, because I am using the network drive independently (as 4 individual drives, rather than 1 aka RAID). I decided to the 4 separate, because our switch size is 24 total ports, so essentially deploying an image to 23 machines at a time. So I assumed 23 /4 ( each SSD drive) = better timing; versus 23/1 (previous set up was 1 usb 3.0 external ssd hard drive).

 

So on the previous setting of a usb 3.0 - SSD external harddrive, I did not make any partitions, however I did host another identical restore image within the machine's internal hard drive, to go along with the external ssd hard drive.

----We were deploying/restoring machines within 12-19 minutes, and crushed the amount we did.

 

Now that I'm on the new setup of a thunderbolt OWC brand, 4 bay, 2.5 SSD network drive.

     - booting the machines into the network image files (again, i have 4, 1 for each of the SSD bays), the process freezes eventually, and only a few out of the 'massive' batch of machines ported in at that time, make it all the way through the process. I am really frustrated because we increased our technology but the results are worse...

 

Does anyone have any suggestions, or input?

 

Thanks!

OS X Server, OS X Server

Posted on Aug 5, 2015 6:07 PM

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Q: NetRestore Image

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  • Helpful answers

  • by John Lockwood,

    John Lockwood John Lockwood Aug 6, 2015 5:08 AM in response to jonathanml86
    Level 6 (9,349 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Aug 6, 2015 5:08 AM in response to jonathanml86

    Having a 24 port network switch with a connection for the server and a connection (each) for the clients will not as you seem to be thinking make it fast. In this case the network connection to the server is the bottleneck. If the server is on a 1Gbps port and each client Mac is also on a 1Gbps network port then the actual speed available to each client is 1Gbps / 24 = 42.66Mbps (slow).

     

    You have three options

     

    1. You can get a network switch with at least one 10Gbps Ethernet port and also get a Thunderbolt to 10Gbps adapter for the Mac mini, this would in theory give a ten-fold improvement
    2. You can 'bond' multiple 1Gbps ports together in the switch and Mac server - this requires multiple 1Gbps interfaces on the Mac server which would be done by adding either USB3 or Thunderbolt Ethernet adapters, bonding four interfaces would in theory give you 4Gbps on the server
    3. You can use a multicast approach rather than a unicast approach

     

    With a multicast approach the Mac server would only send a single copy of the image over the network rather than as you are trying now 24 copies, this copy would however be addressed to 'all' listening devices. Normally network traffic is unicast i.e. addresses to a single device and hence you normally have to send a copy to each device and hence this would be 24 copies all sharing the network speed.

     

    I don't believe Apple's own NetRestore software supports multicasting but DeployStudio does.

     

    Warning, you need to make sure your network is setup properly for this otherwise you might flood your entire corporate network preventing other people doing other stuff. This may mean setting up a separate network so the multicast traffic does not leak.

     

    Now saying all of the above, your right it does not make sense that moving to SSD storage would slow things down. I can say that having four copies of the same identical image does not help at all. You would still be far better off having a single copy but on an SSD, at a minimum this would significantly help from a caching point of view as only one large file needs to be cached rather than four equally large files totally far more space than you would have RAM available to cache them with. You can also use a RAID0 stripe set to speed up the SSD beyond the speed of a single SSD.

     

    Note: Only the latest 2014 model Mac mini supports Thunderbolt2 which can do 20Gbps, older Mac minis only do Thunderbolt1 which is 10Gbps.

  • by cdhw,

    cdhw cdhw Aug 7, 2015 4:29 AM in response to jonathanml86
    Level 4 (2,668 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Aug 7, 2015 4:29 AM in response to jonathanml86

    Your requirements seems like an ideal candidate for using a multicast image server and, preferably, an isolated subnet. Deploystudio is good, but may be overkill for what you want. Apple's own tools, i.e. asr(8), support mutlicast servers.

     

    I've found that unicasting images on a 1Gbps networt starts becoming unreliable once you get to the point that the network links become saturated. You start getting timeouts and have to manually intervene to restart the process, which defeats the point really.

     

    C.

  • by jonathanml86,

    jonathanml86 jonathanml86 Aug 13, 2015 12:11 PM in response to jonathanml86
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iPhone
    Aug 13, 2015 12:11 PM in response to jonathanml86

    I'm a little new to all of this and thanks for the input. Some of your suggestions are seeming to be a bit over my head, in the fields of knowledge.

     

    So as far as serving my 23 machines on the 24 port switch, with my server machine just being a macbook pro with a owc 4 bay SSD drive hooked up via thunderbolt cables, and finding my 23 machines getting the restoreimage deployed and the freezing tending to happen more often than not >>>

     

    What are your immediate recommendations for a solution? I have too many machines to let this hiccup happen so often.

     

    I really appreciate the input community!

  • by jonathanml86,

    jonathanml86 jonathanml86 Sep 8, 2015 12:13 PM in response to jonathanml86
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iPhone
    Sep 8, 2015 12:13 PM in response to jonathanml86

    Seeking some more help guys...

     

    Again my setup is

     

    So now I am testing the waters in Deploystudio

     

    1.) I've set up my server

    2.) I went through Create a DeployStudio Netboot set

    --which worked

     

    I didn't know the method I used was to create an image for computers to use

     

    Again, the environment of my setup is:

     

    1, we get a mass amount of macbooks

    2, we hook them up to our switch into our server environment, to get a wipe/fresh install of a netrestore image

    --the first setup just using the Server app, was causing the macbooks to freeze midway through the reimaging process

     

    So I was told to use DeployStudio

    --while the steps I found worked, they worked for the wrong thing. I don't need this macbooks to just load the image I captured using the 'Create a DeployStudio Netboot set', I literally need that captured image of that machine, to install clean on these interchanging macbooks.

     

    Can someone please help me ?

  • by cdhw,

    cdhw cdhw Sep 8, 2015 2:16 PM in response to jonathanml86
    Level 4 (2,668 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Sep 8, 2015 2:16 PM in response to jonathanml86

    DeployStudio is not an Apple product. You need to RTFM:

     

         http://www.deploystudio.com/category/documentation

     

    and then ask questions in one of its forums:

     

         http://www.deploystudio.com/Forums/index.php

     

    Briefly, you need two images. One is a netboot set created by the 'DeployStudio Assistant' and hosted on your server, which is used to boot the clients. The second 'Master Image' is created by the 'Create a master from a volume workflow' using 'DeployStudio Runtime'. This master is uploaded to the DeployStudio repository on your server. You then use 'DeployStudio Admin' to create another workflow that installs the master image on a netbooted client.

     

    There are lots of ways to set up this sort of system. Personally, I split the disk of my 'Admin' Mac into two (Macintosh HD and Admin HD) and install OS X on both partitions. Boot using Macintosh HD and set up the master how you want it. Boot using Admin HD, install DeployStudio and then create your images.

     

    C.