This feature is OEM specific and provides end users with systems preconfigured with Provisioning Services, allowing customers to deploy an Provisioning Services-enabled environment with minimal effort. This feature becomes an alternative to the standard PXE boot method.
As part of this solution, the OEM embeds the bootstrap within the target device’s BIOS at the factory. The OEM also pre-configures the device with product license keys.
For the BIOS-Embedded Bootstrap feature to work automatically from the factory, the target network must support the following:
- A DHCP server that is capable of providing the target device’s IP, Subnet & Gateway address. Additionally, the DHCP service must provide the default DNS server for the client to use.
- A DNS server must be active on the network
- A DNS entry must be defined which points the name <IMAGESERVER1> to each Provisioning Server's active IP address. This DNS entry is used by the target device to find an active server.
If the target device boots using the BIOS-Embedded Bootstrap, the configuration settings are obtained from the device’s BIOS. These BIOS settings may indicate using DHCP with DNS to lookup the IP and server information (dynamic), or it may list up to four server IP addresses in the BIOS (static).
The first time a target device boots, it reads the product license key and configuration information from the BIOS, locates the Stream Service, and then sends a device registration message to the server. This message contains the information, in addition to the information inherited from the device collection template, necessary to add the device to the Provisioning Services database.