[et-mgmt-tools] Teaching cobbler about images & power

Pablo Iranzo Gómez Pablo.Iranzo at redhat.com
Fri Jun 13 18:12:36 UTC 2008



On Fri, 13 Jun 2008, Michael DeHaan wrote:

> These are two things I want to look at doing soon.
>
> (A)
>
> The image use case:
>
> We're already using Cobbler to help manage DHCP, DNS, PXE trees, and
> abstract out all of the glue that holds the OS's together.  One thing
> that it doesn't do though, is have a good way to deploy images to
> physical machines (cloning).    Kickstart is pretty flexible, I like it
> better, but I know that doesn't solve all the problems of deploying
> "that other OS" and so forth.  Images are also important for the
> appliance space, and we'll also be able to eventually use the same kind
> of image database for virt images depending on how we play our cards.
>
> So, since things like udpcast allow network deployment of the "target"
> boot image, this seems like it would be easy to do something like.
>
>     cobbler system add --name=foo --clone=this-image-target   # syntax
> completely made up at this point


	This could be done in a Unattended-like setup. As explained on
wiki, Unattended is a set of Kernel, Initrd and Perl scripts that setups a
dosemu to install Hasecorp's Hasefroch system. For deploying images, that
kind of setup with a "kernel" and "initrd" with an embedded "partimage"
could help connect to a server with cobbler and use a parameter passed on
kernel command line to determine image to clone on local disk.

> Do something with FreeIPMI / OpenIPMI (I haven't investigated either of
> these in depth yet -- there may be alternatives), so that when assigning
> a new profile to a system record it is then trivial to also power cycle
> that system. This would make PXE reinstallations easier (especially
> where you can't SSH in to restart them) and also would help cobbler
> become more of a tool for managing the low level system bits.


	Then here could fit another proposal: Remote management cards, for
example interaction with iLO interfaces or Remote View Service Boards
among others, in the same way as "fence" does for GFS.

	Regards
	Pablo




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