Snap Deploy Headless PC

We recently purchased Snap Deploy and are interested in being able to deploy to about 50 machines without having to hook up keyboard/mouse/monitor. Right now if we create a Snap Deploy Agent CD it will boot, but it defaults to booting to windows with no user input. Is there a way to get it to default to the agent instead?

Side question: It takes less than ten minutes to image our current machine, but it takes an hour to deploy the same image back to an identical machine. What's causing the extra delay and is there anyway we can minimize it?

Thanks,
Mark

 

Hello Mark,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Complete System Deployment Software.

Could you please clarify where exactly the default action is to boot into Windows? Is it the default setting in BIOS?

As for the restoration could you please let us know whether the image was created in Windows or using Acronis Bootable Media?

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

The Default action to boot into windows appears when booting off the Snap Deploy Agent CD. It loads up an Acronis GUI interface that shows Acronis Snap Deploy Agent and Windows and with no user input it goes into Windows after 15 seconds. We would like it to go into Snap Deploy after the delay so we don't have to hook up input devices to every machine.

The image was created using Acronis Bootable Media.

Thanks,
Mark

 

Hello Mark,

Please make sure the CD is created with the latest (1149) build of Acronis Sanp Deploy. The latest build has no default option to boot into and there is no option to enable the default booting into Acronis Snap Deploy Agent.

As for the time difference, this happens because when you restore the image you write more information to the disk than when you create the image (because the image contains compressed data).

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

The CD is created with Build 1149 and after a 15 second delay it automatically goes into Windows if no user input is received. Are you telling me it isn't possible to change that?

Mark

 

Hello Mark,

We regret to inform you that there is no way to change this option. Current build of Acronis Snap Deploy has booting to Windows as default option. You will need to choose to boot into Acronis Snap Deploy Agent manually.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Hi,

I'm witnessing the same problem as Mark. Please tell me there is a way to change that by editing some files or something ... otherwise the Product is completely useless to work with IPCs or whatever has no monitor/keyboard on it?! Come on, are you serious?


Dennis

(sorry for my english )

 

Despite the claim by Acronis that this is not possible I have come up with a workaround after much time searching and fiddling. I now have a CD that has both the Acronis Image Creator and Acronis Snap Deploy Agent. The CD boots up to a menu screen that allows you to choose either one on bootup and defaults to snap deploy after 5 seconds. It doesn't have the fancy Acronis GUI for choosing, but it works the way we want it to work. If you want a copy of the CD or instructions on how to create one just drop me an email mark at logicstorm dot com

 

please tell me how or send a mail to ***e-mail***

 

The Acronis Snap Deploy remote boot splash screen needs to default to the snap deploy console. Otherwise, PXE boot is more or less useless with this product since you still have to be sitting at the client machine to click on the snap deploy console, which isn't any better than wandering around with a stack of floppies to boot and ghost machines.

Any way we could convince you to post your findings here, Mark 123, since it doesn't look like there's many other options for a solution on this issue?

~Josh

 

I guess you have to walk around with a mouse and monitor in your pocket while deploying
.....

 

This has been solved! After several tests, I have successfully boot automatically from PXE boot to the Snap Delpoy Agent. Here's how...

Find the bootwiz.cfg file (located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\PXEServer) and open it in Notepad

Under the BOOTMGR section add the following lines

DEFAULT [section name] <-- where [section name] is the boot entry you want
DELAY 5 <-- you can choose a higher timeout value if you like


Then save the file and it should work.

My current bootwiz.cfg file looks like this:

[C1]
RUN F28.EXE
VGA VESA
MBRCRCS ON
INITRD F29.BIN /S
KERNEL F30.BIN quiet
[BOOTMGR]
DEFAULT C1
DELAY 5
QUIET ON


It never shows the graphical menu for booting since my timeout is only 5 but it went straight into the Agent and within a minute, popped up in the Management Console ready to go. I also removed the Windows boot entry since I'll never be PXE booting to get into Windows.

If you change the settings for the PXE server entries, the file will be overwritten and reset back to the way it was (non working). So be sure to re-edit it if you make any changes using the Configure PXE Server option in the Console.

Hope this helps!

 

The file also gets reset if you restart the PXE service.

 

Hello all,

We have already forwarded this issue to Acronis Development Team.

Our Development Team currently works on the implementation of this feature into Acronis Snap Deploy Bootable Rescue Media and into Acronis PXE-server.

We will certainly let you know when this feature will be included.

Thank you.
--
Kirill Omelchenko