MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY}w¡¢£¤¥¦§¨ OF INFORMATICS !"#$%&'()+,-./012345<yA| Formalisation of the Central Management Service and broadening of the Solution for Unattended Installation MASTER’S THESIS Matej Antol Brno, autumn 2013 Declaration Hereby I declare, that this paper is my original authorial work, which I have worked out by my own. All sources, references and literature used or excerpted during elaboration of this work are properly cited and listed in complete reference to the due source. Matej Antol Advisor: Mgr. Kamil Malinka, Ph.D. ii Acknowledgement I would like to thank my work advisor, Mgr. Kamil Malinka, Ph.D., for his scientific and professional advisement. I would also like to thank Jaro, Radim, Martin and Nika for their time, help, opinion and advice. Finally, I would like to thank Dávid, Hanka and my parents for their support during my whole studies. iii Abstract This thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part consists of a description of the Central Management Service provided by the In- stitute of Computer Science. The purpose of the Service is to unify the working environment and support for various localities at Masaryk University. The aim of this part of the thesis is to create a formalized document describing the Service, define the terms of service and in- troduce its technical solutions. The second part consists of a description, analysis, design and implementation of the upgrade of the system for unattended OS in- stallation. This system is currently used as part of the Service, and its state is no longer sufficient in terms of the requested functionalities and their scope. The aim of this part of the thesis is the implementa- tion of the new system with all the required functionalities. iv Keywords ICS, Service of Central Management, unattended installation, OPSI, terms of service, remote OS installation. v Contents 1 Introduction ............................ 1 1.1 Content of chapters ..................... 1 2 Central management as a part of IT .............. 3 2.1 Central management of localities at Masaryk University 3 2.2 Unattended installation of operating systems . 4 3 Central Management Service at Masaryk University . 6 3.1 Description of the Central Management Service . 6 3.1.1 Institute of Computer Science . 8 3.1.2 Technical departments and their competencies . 9 3.1.3 Windows domain ucn.muni.cz . 10 3.1.4 Localities managed by the Central Management Service . 11 3.1.5 Lifecycle of the workstation in the Central Man- agement Service . 12 3.2 Formalization of the Central Management Service . 15 3.2.1 Overview of the created document . 16 3.2.2 Additional materials . 19 3.3 Summary ........................... 20 4 Solution for Unattended Installation . 21 4.1 Description of the Solution for Unattended Installa- tion in the Central Management Service . 21 4.1.1 Current technical system for unattended instal- lation . 22 4.1.2 Process of the OPSI netboot product installation 23 4.1.3 Netboot products . 25 4.2 Alternative technologies and tools for unattended OS installation .......................... 28 4.2.1 Microsoft System Center Configuration Man- ager (SCCM) . 29 4.2.2 Unattended with Unattended GUI . 30 4.2.3 Automated Network Installations (ANI) . 31 4.3 Analysis and design of the new Solution for Unattended Installation .......................... 32 4.3.1 Analysis of the current unattended installation system . 32 vi 4.3.2 Design of the new Solution . 33 4.4 Implementation of the designed Solution for Unattended Installation .......................... 35 4.4.1 Upgrade to the OPSI version 4.0.3.2 . 35 4.4.2 Carrying cluster . 35 4.4.3 OPSI testing environment . 35 4.4.4 Former OPSI server in the upgraded solution . 36 4.4.5 Synchronization of the OPSI servers . 36 4.4.6 Installation process speed optimization . 39 4.4.7 Support of the SSD discs and two partition di- vision . 40 4.4.8 Operating Systems deployment outside the UCN domain . 41 4.4.9 Software deployment outside the UCN domain 41 4.4.10 Kill Disk netboot product . 42 4.5 Summary ........................... 42 5 Conclusion ............................. 43 6 Literature .............................. 44 A Appendices ............................ 47 A.1 Description of the Central Management Service . 48 A.2 Popis služby centrální správy . 64 A.3 Information poster: Computer study rooms and class- rooms on MU ........................ 79 A.4 Information poster: Univerzitní poˇcítaˇcovéstudovny a uˇcebnyMU ......................... 80 A.5 Process of addition of a new workstation . 81 A.6 Process of workstation removal . 82 A.7 Process of the OS installation via OPSI system . 83 vii 1 Introduction The scope of study of Information Technologies are systems used for storage, retrieval, processing and transporting various types of data. It can be divided into two main parts: the first one, concerning the physical equipment – hardware, and the second one, covering the logic and instructions run on this equipment – software. This thesis focuses on the software solutions for remote adminis- tration of larger IT units with emphasis on administration of work- stations. These are deployed in various localities belonging to the structures of Masaryk University, possessing similar technical and usage characteristics. The solutions, approaches and tools described in this thesis were developed in order to provide an easily manageable homogenous working and studying environment. The maintenance of such an en- vironment requires vast, reliable and secure tools and technologies. On the other hand, the unification of technical environment through- out the university provides a number of benefits for both users and technical employees managing this environment. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part describes the general approach to the centrally oriented management on Ma- saryk University. The aim of this part of the thesis is to create a set of documents and materials describing this approach in both a technical and a practical way. The second part is a detailed description, analysis and upgrade of one of the core technical solutions, which ensures the remote unat- tended installation of operating systems via the university network. The thesis has been created in cooperation with the Institute of Computer Science. 1.1 Content of chapters The second chapter of this thesis introduces central management as a part of the information technologies. It describes its position and significance in today’s business dependent on modern information technologies. Central management is then further described as a nec- essary component of the IT infrastructure on Masaryk University. 1 1. INTRODUCTION There can also be found reasons for its documentation and formal- ization, introducing the third chapter of the thesis. The last section is introduces one of the technical solutions for the central management service, which is processed in the fourth chapter of this thesis. The third chapter is divided into two parts. The first part is the general description of the current Central Management Service and its environment. The service is described in the context of the IT in- frastructure of Masaryk University and its requirements. The second part consists of a description of the resultant formalized document created as a subject of this thesis and minor materials derived from this document. The fourth chapter of this thesis deals with one of the core solu- tions of the central management service. The reasons for the use of unattended installation tools are presented in the context of the cen- tralized administration approach on Masaryk University. Selected tools for unattended installation are presented and described. Based on the presented requirements and state-of-the-art technologies, an upgraded version of the Solution for Unattended Installation is de- signed. The fifth chapter concludes the thesis, briefly describing all the achieved results. The appendices contain the created documents concerning Cen- tral Management Service. 2 2 Central management as a part of IT Central management can be understood as both service and technol- ogy area of IT. Nowadays, it is one of the main IT areas, concerning administration of greater heterogeneous units serving similar pur- poses. With the spread of IT technologies into everyday work in most businesses, a need for their effective administration arose. The pur- pose of central management systems is therefore the administration of these technologies in larger businesses, such as companies, uni- versities or state offices. A management of such scope consists of three main parts, cover- ing the lifecycle of both HW and SW equipment: • Deployment of IT technologies and infrastructure • Maintenance of these technologies and infrastructure • Removal of these technologies and infrastructure It can also be divided by focus given either on the HW or the SW equipment, or by the provider of the service into self-provided and outsourced IT management. 2.1 Central management of localities at Masaryk University Masaryk University[1] is an institution consisting of more than 40 000 students, 5 000 employees divided into dozens of localities such as faculties, institutes, centers, departments and offices. Its infrastruc- ture is fully dependent on IT technologies during everyday opera- tions of both working and study purposes. This infrastructure, together with all the IT equipment in the Uni- versities’ possession, has to be efficiently maintained in order to pro- vide transparent and straightforward working environment for all students and employees. Central Management Service has been developed as a service dis- tributed across selected university’s localities[2]. Its main role is to 3 2. CENTRAL MANAGEMENT AS A PART OF IT unify the IT environment, allow access to the centralized IT resources, define administration rights and rules and provide all practices and technologies to the interested localities. The problem with the currently available information concerning central management on Masaryk University is that it is incoherent and partially out of date[3]. The objective of the first part of this thesis is therefore the creation of one core document describing the Central Management Service.