Deployment Strategy (Required)

1.      Preparations (including network address planning)

1.      Installation and racking (including the racking of the RCD Servers, Rain Thin Clients, and switches and software installation)

1.      Software upgrade

1.      Software configuration and image creation

1.      Data synchronization (mandatory in cluster mode)

If you need to upgrade the version that has been deployed in classrooms, back up data of the RCD Server (mainly RCD data, including image files and database data).

Note:

1.      The RCD Server upgrade using an ISO file takes about 25–30 minutes. Please wait patiently.

1.      Because the hard disk controller of the Cloud Desktop is upgraded in V3.0, all images need to be edited using the Admin-Tool when the RCD Server is upgraded from an earlier version to V3.0. The Guest-Tool is automatically upgraded during image editing. You can normally use the images only after the new hard disk driver is installed. You must restart the system to access the new images and then install the Guest-Tool to validate the functions.

The following figure shows the procedure for upgrading the RCD Server to V3.0.

1.      If a customer uses the convergent computing function, communicate with the customer to obtain the software and then upgrade the version, and ensure that the upgrade time is sufficient (because the software installed in the Rain system needs to be recovered).

1.      Generally, version rollback (rollback between major versions is not supported) is performed when the upgrade is abnormal. Do not perform version rollback in normal situations. Especially if you use the current version for a long period of time, version rollback may cause anomalies to cooperative products such as Rain.

1.      The entrances for image distribution vary with hardware architectures of the Rain Thin Clients. Simply, the Rain100 and Rain200 adopt the x86 hardware architecture and use the Windows or Linux OS as the underlying system. Therefore, they adopt the iPXE technical solution. The Rain100S adopts the ARM hardware architecture and uses the Android OS as the underlying system. Therefore, the Rain100S adopts the OTA technical solution.

1.      You can select the multicast or unicast mode for image distribution by the iPXE and OTA according to the network conditions. If the network condition is good (1000M switch + 1000M network cable), the multicast mode is recommended; if the network condition is poor or the multicast mode is unavailable, the unicast mode is recommended. If you have no idea of the network condition, use the multicast mode.

1.      Authorization must be performed after the version upgrade. Otherwise, the ClassManager Rainbow is valid for 45 days by default. Then, the software becomes unavailable upon expiration.