Did You Know 5: PXE Boot Workflow

I thought I would want to deep dive into PXE Boot workflow and present it as a pictorial format as there isn't much troubleshooting workflow out there. (At least for me) This may differ from your environment, but generically this workflow should apply most of the SCCM PXE boot environment. (UEFI and Legacy boot).

This diagram will be helpful when I shared with my fellow colleagues, so I thought this will be useful as well. Identify the phase you are stuck in, and check for possible reasons:

In "User Machine" phase, chances are: 

a) PXE boot BIOS settings are not set correctly.

b) Firewall or DHCP server are not set correctly.

In network phase, ensure that your switch has: 

a) IPHELPER configure to point from your switch to DHCP and WDS/TFTP server which in my case the DP server is holder the roles.

b) Your firewall you allow the necessary protocols like port 69 (TFTP), 4011 (PXE related ) and high port range that is required by SCCM server.

In DHCP phase, ensure that: 

a) Your DHCP server do not have port 66 & 67 if you want to do UEFI boot.

b) Port 69 (TFTP) is set.

In DP phase, ensure that: 

a) WDS services are up and running. If this service fail, the machine will have no chance to validate its details with SCCM MP.

In MP phase, ensure that: 

a) You have the SMSPXE.log file to check the connectivity between the MP is valid plus in the log you be able to check the machine validation between MP. If the machine is unable to validate, this could means that the machine detail you have imported in your SCCM console is not correct. (Mis-type a MAC address, happens all the time)

Enjoy reading and hope you guys find it useful. :)

SY