Using parallels and network booting/network passthrough

N

NateG

Bit poster
I work in IT for the school I'm attending and we're trying to set up Windows XP/Vista on a brand new 20" iMac with the new Santa Rosa chips. I installed parallels without any problems, and used a new version of XP SP 2 for the initial installation. Everything went fine.

What we do here is we use Norton Ghost to create/edit/install PC images (.gho files) onto other PC's via the network and we're trying to get it to where I can set up a Norton ghost session (server side) and log into it to dump the image onto my XP parallels machine by network booting. We have a Ghost Boot disk that will allow us to boot into the Ghost server directly from the XP side, unfortunately we run into all kinds of problems with our DHCP table and the way parallels handles IP addresses when trying to network boot.

The current work-around (which I don't really view as a permanent solution) is to go into the Parallels network settings on the Mac and turn off the Parallels Guest-Host IP configurations and the Parallels NAT IP configurations. In the Parallels desktop settings we have to switch the Network setting to Bridged ethernet and select the adapter we want to use. Then when network booting, we manually set the IP the NIC card is using to something that is in our network's IP range. After network booting into the ghost server, we point it to the ghost session that is waiting to accept the client it will install the image on. The only way to do this is to manually enter the IP address of the ghost server into the session on the client side.

All of this is rather tedious, time consuming, and can be prone to errors, so if there's anyone out there that is familiar with Norton Ghost and the way Parallels handles DHCP tables, please feel free to throw out some ideas.
 
The easiest is to maintain an image of Parallels that is embedded inside an image of the OS X install, then, just push the OS X install image over and it's all done (granted, you'll have to run customary set-up scripts, for example, the MAC address will have to be altered). You could use Transporter to 'rip' the install off your primary image you maintain of ghost, then when you update the image of your OS X install, just grab the new 'Transported' Parallels image.

I'm not that familiar with how using Norton Ghost on a network is, but I would imagine if you had things set to Bridged Networking, the Parallels machine would behave like any other Windows machine.
 
Thanks for the response!

We considered that idea, and we also image our Macs here via the network. The problem usually relates to the way the IP is drawn from the DHCP table. We use the Novell Netware Drive storage system for student/faculty storage so it's fairly important that the IP's of all our computers be within the range for our campus IP's.

I guess my whole question still boils down to is there a way to get the IP my iMac is getting to funnel through every OS I install with parallels regardless of the stage of installation? I know you can do it after the OS is installed, but what about when I boot to a network where I'm using PXE to get into the ghost server to access my imaging session?

The reason why I'm asking is because I don't think the administrator for the ghost server would be too keen on installing Transport onto the server. So we're trying to figure this out without having to use Transport.

Also, on a side note, are you familiar with how much network traffic is caused by the Transport system? I could look up the documentation, but just wondering if you knew off hand.

The ghost
 
Nate,

Thanks for the interesting questions! I wonder if I shouldn't start a Parallels forum aimed at system administrators... Much more thought provoking.

So basically, you want any new iMac, after imaging, to have a set IP, correct? That's doable, include that in your install package you push. You should also be able to have the embedded Parallels image contain the IP. If you need the IP to vary, get the freshly imaged Parallels to auto-run a batch script that will set the IP...

Tell me if I am missing something or not.

~Christian
 
Well, that's pretty much it...kind of.

Let me start from scratch.

1. We don't have a currently working image with parallels already embedded into it so part of the problem is the fact that I'm the guy who got assigned to start from scratch on the image. After we get a working image with parallels on it, we will be able to make it a package on our Mac server which will push out to any user's who prefer to use parallels instead of partitioning their drives.

2. Since I gotta start from scratch, I'm starting by putting what we call our "Universal" image which is basically a stripped down version of OS X on this initial "test" iMac. Then, install parallels, followed by a legit copy of Windows (not our site license version). Then to get our "Universal" Windows image which contains all of our standard software packs and scripts we run on machines relating to profiles/priveleges/campus policies, etc., onto the .hdd we need to network boot with our Ghost network boot disk which works when you set Parallels to boot to the CD drive first.

3. Here's the problem, the Network boot script we use checks to see what kind of network card we're using, then, checks to see if the appropriate driver for the card can be found on the local hard drive, usually no problem. The script recognizes the card, and tries to assign the machine an IP address from the DHCP table then starts hanging, and the only way to get the machine to actually network boot is to reboot and manually assign it an IP address inside the Parallels window.

At this point I've just put transporter on a temporary Windows box that already has our Window's "Universal" image and dumped it on to the Mac side and this works flawlessly minus having to install a couple of drivers. It isn't really a huge deal, as now I'm almost done with the image anyways, and once that's accomplished, we'll just make a .dmg of it and push it out to the people who have purchased Parallels/Windows/Vista...(etc.) licenses for their deparment.

On a side not, a slot for system admins wouldn't be a bad idea, probably won't get a ton of population on there, but at least a place where people can avoid having to sift through the "How WoW doesn't work?" threads. ;P j/k
 
Nate,

If you find some other Sys Admins interested, I'll get a forum set-up for a targeted base...

Ok, so your DHCP is recognizing the card, and tries to set the IP accordingly, which is where it breaks, right? Is the IP determined via MAC Address?

If it is determined via MAC address, is making use of a temporary static feasable? Also, if the computer uses DHCP with a manually assigned address, would that work?

I think the use of the .dmg you are almost finished with is best, personally.
 
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