The first time you set up a RIS server, it can seem a bit complicated if you’re not ready for it, as RIS is a bit different from other Server 2003 services. What I’m referring to is that to install most Server 2003 network services, like IIS or WINS, you just install them on a server, reboot the server (and many times you needn’t even reboot), and you’re done. Setting up RIS on a server, however, requires fiddling a bit with Active Directory.
Tip Before you can use RIS, you must have Active Directory running. It seems to work fine with either a 2000-based or
Server 2003–based AD, but you need AD. As you’ll learn later or you might already know, you can’t have AD without a functioning DNS server that supports RFC 2782 SRV records and RFC 2136 dynamic updates, as described in Chapter 8.
Warning In order to explain how to set up RIS, I’ll need to assume that you already know what a DHCP server
is. If, however, you have not worked with previous versions of NT and so probably don’t know DHCP, then don’t worry about it—just skip this section until you’ve learned about TCP/IP, DHCP, and Active Directory in the next few chapters, then return to this section. (And in that case, please accept my apologies for making you jump around the book.)
To get a RIS server working, follow these steps:
1. Set up a Server 2003 system and make it a member of an Active Directory domain. The server must have a fairly large NTFS drive available, and that drive can’t be the boot drive or the drive containing the operating system. (When I say “drive” here I mean “partition.” You needn’t have two physical hard disks for a RIS server, but you do need to have at least two logical drives.) 2. Authorize the soon-to-be-RIS server in the Active Directory as a Dynamic Host Configura-
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3. Add the Remote Installation Services service to the server and reboot it.
4. Run RISetup, the Remote Installation Setup Wizard, to prepare the large drive for receiving RIS images and to put an initial image on the drive—it’s just a simple copy of I386.
5. At that point, the RIS server is ready. You can add new images to it with a wizard called RIPrep.
We’ll examine each of these steps in the following pages.
Getting Ready for RIS
RIS’s job is to let you take a PC with an empty hard disk, attach the PC to your enterprise network, put a RIS-created floppy disk into the PC’s A: drive, and boot the PC. The small program on the floppy disk is just smart enough to get an IP address for the PC, then locate an Active Directory domain controller and ask the Active Directory domain controller where to find a RIS server. Once the PC finds the RIS server, it can then start the process of pulling down a particular system image so that the PC becomes useful.
Necessary Infrastructure
But RIS needs some infrastructure to make all of this work right. The PC gets an IP address from a DHCP server, so you’ll need at least one DHCP server running in your enterprise to make RIS work. (In case you’ve never worked with an IP-based NT network before, DHCP’s job is to automatically assign unique network addresses to each server and workstation on the network. TCP/IP requires that every machine have a unique IP address, or the network software just doesn’t work.) Once it has an IP address, the PC finds an Active Directory server by looking it up in DNS—so you’ll need a DNS server. And the PC can’t query an Active Directory domain controller for the location of a RIS server unless you’ve got an Active Directory domain controller—so you’ll need an Active Directory–based domain (as opposed to a bunch of Server 2003s in a domain built out of NT 4 domain controllers). Of course, if you’re running an Active Directory–based domain, then you’ve got to have DNS running, so the simplified list of things you’ll need before RIS will work is an Active Directory–based domain and at least one DHCP server.
A Drive for SIS
Furthermore, the RIS server needs a partition to store the RIS images. For some reason, RIS will not store images on the boot partition—which is usually drive C:—or the system partition, which is the drive that contains \windows and the other NT system files.
Note Please, don’t write me letters explaining to me that Microsoft’s definition of “boot drive” is the one that contains \winnt or \windows, and their definition of “system drive” is the drive that you boot from. I know that’s what they call it, but it makes no sense, so I’m going to tend to say “system drive” for the one with the operating system, and “boot drive” for the drive that you boot from. I know, that’s not what Microsoft told you, but to quote John Candy from the movie Planes, Trains, andAutomobiles, “If they told you that wolverines made great pets, would you believe that too?”
I found this you-need-a-drive-that-is-neither-system-nor-boot thing kind of frustrating the first time I went to set up RIS, as the server that I intended to put RIS on had only two drive letters and Windows 2000 (this was back when I first tried RIS, under Win2K) installed on the D: drive. C: was the boot, D: the system, and so RIS wouldn’t install. I reinstalled Windows 2000 on the C: drive, freeing
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up D:, and RIS worked fine. You can have other things on RIS’s drive, like files of other types; you just can’t have the system files on the drive. Remember that while RIS will make an image of whatever filesystem is on the original workstation, it must be placed onto an NTFS partition on the server.
While it’s not entirely clear to me why RIS is allergic to system files, there’s a very good reason why it wants a drive pretty much to itself. Imagine a RIS server that contained 20 system images—how much space would that need? Well, Windows 2000 Professional (to use the example of one OS that RIS supports) takes up about 450MB on a hard disk, so let’s be generous and say that the applications added to the image only total 50MB, leading to a 500MB image; it’s just easier to calculate this way. Ten half-gigabyte images totals 5 gigabytes. But now let’s look more closely at those 10 images. The vast majority of the files in the images are identical: For example, each image contains a file named
Drivers.cab that’s nearly 50MB in size, and the file is exactly the same for each of the 10 images.
That’s a terrible waste of space—500MB to store 10 identical copies of a 50MB file!
RIS solves that problem with a service called the Single Instance Store, or SIS. SIS is a service called the SIS Space Groveler (is that a great service name, or what?) that runs in the background and searches the directory that RIS uses to store system images looking for duplicate files. It then frees up space by deleting the duplicate files, putting in their place a directory entry that makes it appear as if the duplicate is still in place. In actuality, however, the duplicate is no more than a sort of pointer to the complete copy of the file. Clearly a trick like this will require a bit of magic, and that magic comes from a combination of the NTFS of SIS and Windows 2000 and later—that dedicated-to- RIS drive must be an NTFS volume.
Extending SIS: Side Notes
It’s a shame that SIS only loads as part of RIS; I could easily imagine many cases wherein recovering space from duplicate files could be beneficial, such as in the case of a server containing hundreds of users’ home directories—there’s likely to be plenty of duplication there.
Actually, if you’re feeling a bit brave, then you actually can get SIS to run on other drives, according to Knowledge Base article 226545. It says that SIS identifies which drives to do its magic on by looking for three things:
◆ First, the drive must be an NTFS drive.
◆ Second, the drive must contain a hidden folder in its root named SISCommonStore.
◆ Finally, that SISCommonStore folder must contain a file named MaxIndex.
I honestly have not tried this myself, but I pass along the information in case it’s of help. So, for example, to apply SIS to any given file server, just install the RIS service on that system (even if you do not intend to make the server a RIS server), place a hidden folder named SISCommonStore
in the root of whatever drive you want SIS to work on, and don’t forget MaxIndex.
While I’m on the subject of advanced SIS maintenance, here’s another tidbit from the Knowledge Base, article 272149. You can, if you want to, tell SIS to ignore a particular directory in this way:
1. Start up a Registry-editing tool.
2. Navigate to the key named HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\ CurrentVersion\Groveler\ExcludedPaths.
3. Create a new value entry with any name that you like, of type REG_SZ.
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For example, suppose I wanted SIS to ignore a directory named mystuff on a SIS volume. I’d just
go to the key named above and create a new value entry. I could call that value entry NoMyStuff. I’d make it of type REG_SZ, and in the entry I would place the string “\mystuff.” Then either I’d have to reboot to see the changes take effect, or I’d have to stop and start the SIS Space Groveler service.
Warning Be aware, however, that I’m told that unless you back up this drive with a backup program that is SIS-aware,
then SIS drives aren’t backed up properly. Sometimes the backup program thinks that it’s backing up a file, but it actually just backs up SIS’s pointer to a drive. Restoring that pointer without the file is usually not helpful.