What are the different ways of doing bare metal provisioning?
• Using CD-ROMs or a DVD, one system at a time. This works fine if you have fewer than a handful of systems and you don’t re-purpose systems often. • Using “home grown” tools and scripts that allow systems to be provisioned over a Local Area Network. These traditionally are very complex to set up, and the knowledge of how to use them resides in the head of only a few people. • Using commercial products that are part of broader systems management solutions used in large enterprises (sophisticated, policy-based, expensive, often hard to justify financially) • Using LinMin Bare Metal Provisioning, whereby you upload all the Linux, Windows and ESX/ESXi ISO files (or DVDs) for all the operating systems and hypervisors you use only once (benefit over solution 1), then specify how and when systems get provisioned and with what OS/hypervisor.
