When working with physical hardware, it is not a given that you could simply clone a virtual machine template to the hard drive and expect it to work. It is, of course, entirely possible to do this with the right tools, but it is tricky, and there is no guarantee the resulting system will run.

For example, cloud-ready images will only have the kernel modules installed for the common virtualized network adapters, and so, may not run (or not have network connectivity) when installed on a modern piece of hardware.

In spite of this, it is still entirely possible to perform automated, standardized builds on physical hardware, and this chapter provides a complete hands-on approach to doing so. In conjunction with the preceding chapter, by the end of this one, you will have practical experience of the automated build process for standardizing images for all your platforms, whether they are virtual, cloud-based, or physical.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• PXE booting basics
• Performing unattended builds
• Adding custom scripts to unattended boot configurations