Uploading an image
When it’s done, shutdown the Fedora computer and head back to the Fog server. Fire up the dashboard and head to Host Management > List All Hosts. The Fedora server will be listed here. By default, Fog identifies each host by its MAC address. You can change it to something more meaningful (like ‘Fedora 22’) by clicking on the ‘Edit’ icon. Here you can change its name and add a brief description to identify this computer. Most importantly, use the Host Image pull-down menu and select the Fedora 22 image you created earlier.
Now that our basic framework in ready, it’s time to image the installed Fedora installation. Head back to Task Management > List All Hosts which will list your rechristened Fedora 22 installation. Under the Task section corresponding to this image, click on the green upload arrow. Fog will give you multiple options to schedule the upload task. You can explore the options after clocking some mileage with Fog but for now it’s best to go with the default option for instant deployment.
Then head back to the Fedora machine and boot it up. It’ll again detect Fog’s PXE and automatically image the machine and upload it to the Fog server. The process will take some time depending on the size of the disk it has to image, the processing capabilities of the computers involved and the speed of the local network.
The Fedora computer will restart once it’s done uploading the image. You can now use Fog to deploy this Fedora image on all the lab computers with a single click! You can similarly image any other computer on the network, including the new Windows 10 installations.
Before you can deploy an image, you need to register the targets machines as hosts with the Fog Server. The registration process is the same as before. Boot the new computer from the network which should detect Fog’s PXE environment. When it does, select the ‘Quick Registration and Inventory’ option.
When you’ve added the computer to Fog’s repository of known computers, login to the Fog dashboard and head to Host Management > List All Hosts. Click on the ‘edit’ icon corresponding to the newly added machine and rename it so that it’s more identifiable, something like Lab PC #1. Again, remember to use the Host Image pull-down menu to select the Fedora 22 image that we’ve just imaged from another computer. Repeat the process to register all the computers in the lab with the Fog server. Then edit them in the Fog dashboard to give then an identifiable name and select the Fedora image as the host image.
Now we need to replicate the Fedora image on to the other lab computers, which we do by heading to Task Management > List All Hosts. Browse through the list of hosts to find the entry for the computer you wish to deploy to and select the corresponding down arrow ‘Deploy image’ option. After the deploy task has been created, head to the lab computer and power it on. It’ll automatically detect the task from the Fog server and copy the image from the server on to the local machine. When this is done, you’ll have a mirror copy of the Fedora installation on the Lab computer. Finally, you need to repeat the process to deploy Fedora on other Lab computers as well.