Acronis Snap Deploy 5 - User Guide - Manual (Page 106)

106 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2014

Upload a Preinstallation Environment (PE) image to the PXE server by clicking Upload PE
image to PXE. For information about creating a PE image (a WIM file), see “Adding Acronis
Snap Deploy 5 components to WinPE” (p. 70).
When uploading the agent or the PE image:

Set Start operating system as the default boot menu option.

Set up a reasonable time-out so that the operating system can start automatically. You can
leave the default setting for the time-out.
Without a PXE server, you will need to boot the target machines manually (p. 112) before the
deployment task starts.
Alternatively, you can configure online deployment (p. 115) to the target machines.
Setting up a machine to boot from PXE
For bare metal, it is enough that the machine BIOS configuration supports network booting. This is
because no operating system is present on the hard disk, so the machine will boot from the network
even if the hard disk drive is the first device in the boot sequence.
On a machine that already has an operating system on the hard disk, the BIOS must be configured so
that the network adapter is either the first boot device, or at least precedes the Hard Drive device in
the boot sequence.
The following example shows one of the reasonable BIOS configurations. Unless you insert a
bootable media, the machine will boot from the network.
Example of setting up the BIOS for network booting
In some BIOS versions, you have to save changes to BIOS after enabling the network adapter so that
the network adapter appears in the list of boot devices.
If the hardware has multiple network adapters, make sure that the network adapter supported by
the BIOS has the network cable plugged in.