PXE-based deployment

Provisioning supports PXE booting and image deployment. With PXE-based deployment, you can boot both new and existing PXE-enabled devices into a WinPE preboot environment where you can select and execute a provisioning script. Or scan devices into your core database and then schedule an provisioning task with the Scheduled tasks tool.

PXE-based provisioning is a useful way to image devices in a variety of situations, such as:

  • Initial provisioning of new devices.
  • Imaging devices in a test or training lab.
  • Re-imaging corrupted devices.

Ivanti® Endpoint Manager and Endpoint Security for Endpoint Manager offers a couple of options to provision devices:

  • Ivanti managed boot, which lets you pre-target devices with existing agents for imaging.
  • A PXE boot menu, which lets you interactively select an option for a non-UEFI device.
  • An option to always PXE boot UEFI devices.

Enabling PXE representatives

Starting with Ivanti® Endpoint Manager and Endpoint Security for Endpoint Manager 2016.3, PXE representatives are part of self-electing subnet services (SESS). SESS simplifies PXE deployment. The 2016.3 and newer Ivanti agent installation process automatically uninstalls legacy PXE representatives. For more information on SESS, see Self-electing subnet services.

When the PXE service is enabled for multiple devices on a subnet, SESS will ensure that only one device per subnet is running the PXE service and SESS will automatically elect a new PXE representative if the originally elected device goes down.

PXE representatives automatically update their PXE settings and local copies of WIM files. By default they do this every 15 minutes. When you update WIM files, be aware that PXE representatives may not get the change until the polling interval completes. You can customize the polling interval in PXE subnet settings.

The PXE service components are part of the base agent configuration, but PXE is disabled by default in agent settings. Once the PXE service is enabled in the client connectivity agent settings and the setting is deployed to devices, SESS will elect a PXE service representative for each subnet where the PXE service has been activated.

It's important to note that an elected PXE representative will be available for use, but by default it won't PXE boot any devices except for those that are set to network boot.

Follow these steps to enable PXE on a subnet.

Additional PXE information: