Proxmox preinstallation to HDD

[jalillbe]

Hello Everyone!
Maybe I find a solution here. I have a bunch of servers where many of them I cannot access to their bios nor boot order (please no questions why, bios is just hidden on purpose). I am investigating Proxmox and how to utilize these servers in a cluster. So far it seems very promising. I an access servers physically and removed their hard drives. So I have one lab server where I can install drives to and do a install in there. I have cleared the drives so there is no existing volumes.

It takes some time so the question follows;
- Is there a way to extract existing ISO file (that is sysprep'd or somehow anonymized) directly to hard drive?
or altenatively
- If I use Rufus to extract install iso media into boot drive and enter unattended.txt type of config file so that the install goes thru without asking anything?

Appreciate your input, please let me know if developers made solution for this?

 

[jsterr]

- Is there a way to extract existing ISO file (that is sysprep'd or somehow anonymized) directly to hard drive?
or altenatively

Not that I know of. You can put the drive in a different system and then install on it and swap it into the other system (that you cant acess bios) Would install legacy...

- If I use Rufus to extract install iso media into boot drive and enter unattended.txt type of config file so that the install goes thru without asking anything?

Theres no way to automate the setup of the Proxmox VE 8 iso. There are some things in planning, but they wont come before 8.1 maybe even later. You can go the Debian way, by installing debian and putting Proxmox VE on it, if you are familiar with Debian automation. https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_11_Bullseye

 

[LnxBil]

Appreciate your input, please let me know if developers made solution for this?

Why don't you install it on the disk itself and plug it into the other server? You could configure DHCP and copy a working disk image onto all disks of the cluster.