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Deploying a server pattern to a server

You can deploy a server pattern to one or more individual servers or to groups of servers at the same firmware level. You can also deploy a server pattern to one or more empty bays in a chassis that is managed by Lenovo XClarity Administrator or in a placeholder chassis. Deploying a server pattern before the server is installed reserves management IP addresses, reserves virtual Ethernet or Fibre Channel addresses, and pushes the network setting to the relative switch internal ports.

Before you begin

Read the server-configuration considerations before you attempt to apply a server pattern to your managed devices (see Deploying a server pattern to a server).

Ensure that all target servers are at the same firmware level. When you learn a pattern from a specific server, the pattern contains configuration settings for the versions of firmware that are installed on that server.

Attention
Applying a server pattern might fail if the pattern was created using an earlier firmware level that what is installed on the server.

Procedure

To deploy a server pattern to a managed server, complete the following steps.

  1. From the Lenovo XClarity Administrator menu bar, click Provisioning > Server Configuration Patterns. The Server Configuration Patterns page is displayed.
  2. Click the Server Patterns tab.
  3. Select the server pattern to deploy, and click the Deploy icon (Deploy pattern icon).

    The Deploy Server Pattern dialog is displayed with the selected server pattern listed in the Pattern to Deploy list.

  4. Choose when to activate the configurations:
    • Full. Immediately powers on or restarts the server to activate server, baseboard management controller, and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) configurations.
    • Partial. (default) Immediately activates management-controller configurations, but defers the activation of server and UEFI configurations until the next server restart. The server must be manually powered on or restarted before the profile is fully activated.
      Note
      When deploying server patterns that included only IMM settings (including system information, management interface, and extended BMC category patterns), the server does not need to be restarted.
    • Deferred. Generates a profile for the server, management controller, and UEFI configurations but does not activate the configuration settings on the server. You must manually activate the server profile by restarting the server before the profile is fully activated.
    Note
    The network settings on the relative switch internal ports are pushed to the switch immediately after the deployment, regardless of activation configuration.
  5. Choose one or more servers or empty chassis bays to which you want to deploy the server pattern.
    Note
    To display a list of empty chassis bays, select Show Empty Bays.
  6. Click Deploy. A dialog is displayed that lists the deployment status of each selected bay.
  7. Click Deploy again to start the deployment process.
    Note
    Deployment might take several minutes to complete. During deployment, a server profile is created and assigned to each selected server or chassis bay.
  8. Click Close.

After you finish

You can monitor the deployment progress by clicking Monitoring > Jobs from the XClarity Administrator menu bar. You can also monitor the server-profile creation by clicking Provisioning > Server Profiles. After the deployment is complete, review the generated server profiles, and record the management IP address and any virtualized Ethernet or Fibre-Channel addresses.

If you deployed a server pattern to an existing server and selected:
  • Full activation, a server profile is created for each server, the configuration is propagated to each server, and each server is rebooted to activate the configuration changes.
  • Partial activation, a server profile is created for each server, and the configuration is propagated to each server. To fully activate the configuration changes, you must manually power on or restart each server (see Powering on and off a server).
  • Deferred activation, a server profile is created for each server. You must manually activate the server profile on the server (see Activating a server profile).

If you deployed a server pattern to an empty bay in a managed chassis or placeholder chassis, after the compute nodes are physically installed in appropriate chassis bays and then discovered and managed by Lenovo XClarity Administrator, you must deploy and activate the server profile to the newly installed compute nodes (see Activating a server profile).

If one or more servers do not start after you deployed a new server pattern to those servers, the problem might be that the boot settings were overwritten with the default boot settings that are in the server pattern. For operating systems that are installed in UEFI mode, restoring the default settings might require additional configuration steps to restore the boot configuration. For examples for recovering boot settings on servers that are running on Windows or Linux, see Recovering boot settings after server pattern deployment.