[et-mgmt-tools] Xen domU + koan

[Michael DeHaan]

James Fidell wrote:
> Michael DeHaan wrote:
>
>   
>> Basically just set up cobbler and import a tree (or set it up manually)
>> on the server side, just like you'd do with PXE.
>>     
>
> Ok, that's done.
>
>   
>> From the koan side,  specify the name of a Xen profile, which is by
>> definition one that has a distro that uses a Xen (domU) kernel.
>>     
>
> In this case I want a fully virtual system, so I can use tell koan to
> use a normal cobbler profile, I think.
>
>   
>> Koan will talk with the cobbler server to get the right parameters, just
>> as they are configured in cobbler.
>>     
>
> Then I start to lose the plot :)  Presumably the domU must already be
> configured, otherwise there'd be no way to find out how its hard disk
> image is mapped from dom0, amongst other things?
>
> Can I literally do:
>
>   1. Set up cobbler
>   2. Create config file for domU
>   3. xm create ...
>   4. koan ...
>
> or are there other steps I've missed?
>   

Hmm, I think you may be looking for koan to do something else than what 
it's designed to do, but I'm not sure what.

Koan replaces the xm create.     It creates the domU image for you, same 
as "xm create" or (preferred) virtguest-install would do, except it does 
so using a reusable profile that can be controlled server side and 
shared with multiple dom0 machines for repeatable results.  

Suppose you have already used cobbler to install a datacenter/lab full 
of dom0 machines (maybe you installed them with cobbler, and if you did, 
you get bonus points).

You want, on any of these machines, to be able to repeatably install 
virtual images, with specific kickstarts, and specific disk space and 
RAM requirements.   Say you want to install a new virtual webserver on 
many of them.   So you create a "fc6virtualwebserver" profile in cobbler.

Now you can go around to these dom0 machines and repeatedly install the 
same virtual profile on each of them:

koan --virt --profile=fc6virtualwebserver --server=bootserver.example.com

For another example, say many people frequently wanted to install a 
special development environment on their workstations.   You could 
create a cobbler profile for that environment, and then anyone who 
wanted to install it could just run:

koan --virt --profile=specialDevelopmentEnvironment 
--server=bootserver.example.com

This eliminates the need to know the arguments needed for 
virtguest-install or xm-create and allows the definitions of these 
profiles to be managed centrally, along with their associated kickstart 
trees and repository mirrors.   That's what koan does.

> James
>
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