Operating system installation

DCImanager 6 utilizes OS templates to install operating systems (OS). OS templates in DCImanager 6 is a set of disk images and installation scripts. After installation, you will have an operating system without additional software and settings ("freshly installed" OS).

In order for the operating system to be available for installation on the server, the appropriate template from the ISPsystem repository must be uploaded to the location.

You can install:

• operating systems:
   
  • Arch Linux;
  • AlmaLinux 8, 9;
  • CentOS 6, 7, 8;
  • CentOS Stream 8, 9;
  • Debian 8, 9, 10, 11, 12;
  • Fedora 32;
  • FreeBSD 11, 12, 13, 14;
  • Rocky Linux 8, 9;
  • Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04;
  • Windows 10;
  • Windows Server 2012 R2, 2016, 2019, 2022; 
• hypervisor VMware ESXi 6.

The maximum time allotted for installing Windows OS is 200 minutes, for other OS — 140 minutes. If during this time the OS is not installed, DCImanager 6 will forcibly complete the installation operation.

To install an operating system to the server:

1. Go to Servers → menu → Install OS from template.
2. Select the Operating system.
3. Select one of the available Applications and scripts. You can create your own script in advance or select scripts available from ISPsystem repository. Read more in Scripts.

4. Select the Drive layout method:

   Automatically

   Select Software RAID. DCImanager 6 automatically detects the RAIDs available for installation. Read more in Software RAID.

   When automatical drive layout is selected, the available disk space will be divided into partitions taking into account the selected RAID.

   Note

   If a hardware RAID is installed on the server, software RAID setup may result in errors and reduced drive speed.
   Manually

   1. Select one or more drives of the same type and size to install the OS.

   2. If you select multiple drives, DCImanager 6 will combine them into a RAID. Depending on the number of drives selected, different software RAID levels will be available. Select the required option.

      Note

      If you have hardware RAID, software RAID selection is not available during manual drive layout.
   3. Manually drive layout the available disk space, which will vary depending on the selected RAID level. By default, DCImanager 6 creates three partitions: swap, /boot and /. You can change the size of these partitions and the file system. Minimum recommended values are set for swap and /boot, we do not recommend reducing them.
   4. To create another partition, press Add section. Enter the partition name, set the size and select the file system. If you want to return to the values set by DCImanager 6, press Set the default values.
   Note

   Drive layout is also not available for Windows and when installing from an ISO image.
5. Enter the Server administrator password.

6. Add SSH-key to access the server:

   1. Enter its Name in DCImanager 6.
   2. Paste the content of the public key into the SSH-key content field.
   3. Press Add.
7. Click on Install. DCImanager 6 will start the process in the background. The Server status will be changed in to "OS installation".