Software image management

PMAC maintains a repository of software images that are used for installing the application software, and the operating system onto server blades. This section describes the GUI pages that provide management functions for the software images.

PMAC requires a software image to install an operating system or application or on a server blade. You make the image available to PMAC by issuing the Add Image command on the PMAC GUI. There are several methods of supplying the image to PMAC:

• Place the image in /var/TKLC/upgrade. This directory is used to move an image via the network using scp to a directory on PMAC. This directory is typically big enough to move one image at a time.
• Transfer an image via the network using sftp to the PMAC using the pmacftpuser account. This directory is used to move an image via the network using sftp to a directory on PMAC.
• Provide the image on a CD or DVD inserted into the DVD drive of the server on which PMAC is running.

Each software image in the repository is mounted on the file system and made available on the network (exported) for network-based installations. A PMAC database tracks all images in the repository.

When a software image is added to the repository, it is copied so that the original source file is no longer required on the system.

Before a software image is added to the image repository, PMAC validates that the image exists on the file system and that the image does not already exist in the PMAC image repository. Additionally, PMAC checks for a TPD-based validation mechanism, and if present, uses it to validate the contents of the image.

The Add Image command can take more than 30 seconds to complete depending on the size of the image. For this reason, the command runs as a background task. The PMAC GUI shows the progress of the Add Image background task.

The PMAC GUI enables you to delete software images from the repository. When an image is deleted, it is first unmounted from the file system, and then the file is deleted. All references to the image are removed from the PMAC database.

By default, the PMAC admin and ops user groups can add images to the repository, delete images from the repository, and view the images in the repository. The guests user group can only view the images in the repository.

Only ISO image files are supported in the repository.

PMAC allocates 60 GBs of file system storage for storing images in a repository. The image repository is capable of storing a maximum of 255 software images (constrained by a maximum number of loop mounts).