If your server is equipped with DRAC card and you have also a DVD with an operating system inserted into server’s DVD-ROM, installing the OS remotely is quite an easy operation. However, problems occur when the inserted DVD is damaged and makes the OS installer to stop – without physical presence in the server room, you will have to install the OS using Virtually mounted DVD through network. There would be no problem with that if the Windows Installer would be ignorring the inserted physical DVD – unfortunately it does not ignore it.
So even when you request the server to boot from Virtual media, during the installation the Windows Installer will be using the physically inserted DVD as a source. To avoid that sick behavior you have to disable any optical drives in server’s BIOS setup for the time of installation. After disabling them, Windows Installer will look for source files only on virtual media and not on physical DVD allowing you to successfully install the OS.