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I have nine physical servers, but only one copy of CentOS 7 installation media, on a flash drive. I would like to install CentOS 7 on all nine servers, but I'm in a bit of a hurry. Unfortunately, these servers don't have integrated management controllers.

I know that some Linux distros can be run entirely from RAM. Once the OS boots, its perfectly fine to remove the boot media, and the OS continues to function. Does the CentOS 7 installer support this functionality? If so, how do I use it? My objective is to start the installer on one server, and once everything has been loaded to RAM, I can remove the flash drive, insert it into the next server, and boot it.

Aaron Copley
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ADS103
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2 Answers2

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You should look into the netinstall option. You use your boot media to get the installation going, but it loads packages from a networked source. This could be an Internet mirror (not recommended or supported) or an internal repository.

If you need automated or heavily customized installations, there is Kickstart.

Aaron Copley
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  • I had considered netinstall - there's just one catch. Once I see the install options (language, storage, network, etc.), is it then safe to remove the flash drive, such that multiple servers may install simultaneously? – ADS103 Jan 26 '18 at 19:41
  • I don't recall at what point you can remove or eject the media. I know in normal installs you can eject once it is installing the packages from a URL. Sorry. It might be worth trying it and finding out. It wouldn't take very long. – Aaron Copley Jan 26 '18 at 19:43
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If it were me, and I was in that much of a hurry, I'd go get a couple more flash drives and copy them. If you don't already have a few extras lying around they're cheap as dirt now-a-days...

The other option would be to set up a PXE server and put the image in there, but that will likely take longer than simply installing them one at a time. Would help out in the future though if you have to do this kind of thing with any frequency.

Bart
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