How do you perform server OS installs?

How do you perform server OS installs at your current or previous jobs? I've been using Vagrant lately to quickly spin up virtual labs, but I'm wondering how the industry normally performs [bare-metal] OS installs, especially when needed in mass.

Do you use some sort of imaging solution, where you have a golden base image that can be quickly mirrored onto the target server and then perform configuration on top?

Do you use automated OS installation tools, such as Kickstart? Kickstart is Red Hat proprietary; what are alternatives for other platforms, such as Windows/Ubuntu/SUSE/Solaris? Are there any [open source] tools generally used? Any that are somewhat platform agnostic and handles different forms of *nix and even Windows and Mac? Cobbler/Spacewalk?

Do you use some form of "provisioning" tool? I believe Puppet has a module that can perform the OS installation, seed the node w/ an installation of Puppet, and then continue to post-install/configuration after the OS is fully up. However, I have no Puppet experience. Is this generally used in the industry? What are the alternative "provisioning" tools out there?

Does anyone actually insert physical media into a server at work?

I've been playing around with configuration management tools, but I'm trying to figure out how one ties these tools into the initial server build process.

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jibbajabba

Back in the bare metal days we used Acronis, and when restoring to new hardware, Acronis with Universal Restore. Going even further back (Win2k), Symantec Ghost. In one place we used SCCM and UCS Director I think.

networker050184

Our guys are into Razor from Puppet these days it seems.

xnx

I've not done many but I used WDS to deploy Server 2012 to another new server

TylerBarrett

Working at my MSP we haven't gone that route (yet, might in the future). We just order the server hardware then use the disks to install the OS and configure from there.

DoubleNNs

I'm mostly looking for bare-metal Linux installations, but interested if there's a single tool that pretty much does everything.

I think I'll play around w/ Spacewalk, The Foreman, and Puppet's Razor within the next few weeks. (However, I'd want to use Puppet's Razor only for the OS installatioan and automatically install Chef or SaltStack on the server during the OS installation.)

Has anyone used either of those in production?

W Stewart

The current company that I'll be leaving shortly uses a custom imaging solution. Companies I've worked for in the past have used clonezilla or a clean install from an iso but I've always worked more on the linux side of things.