Prepare installation media

To install N-able N-central on a bare metal server, without the option to upload a disk image through iLO, iDRAC or IMM2, you will need to prepare a DVD, or a USB Flash Drive with the N-able N-central installer image.

DVD Creation

Follow the directions for your DVD creation software to burn the N-able N-central .iso to disk.

USB Flash Drive

For the USB Flash drive to properly install N-able N-central on both BIOS and UEFI systems, you need to write the .iso image to disk using the “DD” disk writing method. The USB Flash Drive must be at least 2GB in size. You will not be able to use any extra space on the drive until after N-able N-central is installed and you reformat the drive.

This process is a destructive process for the USB Flash Drive. All data on the USB Flash Drive will be erased.

Linux and MacOS

  1. Elevate to the root user so you can mount the USB Flash Drive.

    2. sudo su –

  2. Identify the USB Flash Drive device name. Be careful to verify the device size so you don’t accidentally overwrite another device, like you hard disk.

    3. Linux: lsblk

    MacOS: diskutil list

  3. Write the disk image to the USB Flash Drive. Make sure the device you are writing to is your USB Flash Drive. This step will overwrite all data on the drive. Be sure to specify the device name, not the partition name (/dev/sdb, not /dev/sdb1).

    4. dd if=/path/to/N-central.iso of=/dev/device-name bs=512k

Windows

Use a third-party utility, for example, Rufus, to write the disk image to your USB Flash Drive.

When copying the .iso file, ensure you use the following configuration options:

  • Partition scheme: “MBR”
  • Target system: “BIOS or UEFI”
  • Volume label: Leave it as is. Do NOT change the label!
  • File system: FAT32
  • Cluster size: Default

If you are asked to select the mode used to write the image to disk, use DD Image mode. If not selected, N-able N-central may fail to install on certain devices.