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

[Michael DeHaan]

Pablo Iranzo Gómez wrote:
> 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.
>   

Clonezilla is apparently udpcast + partimage

I'm probably not going to be doing anything with unattended specifically 
as we don't want to do something Windows
specific when some people still have reasons for deploying other 
operating systems.

>   
>> 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.
>   

That too...
> 	Regards
> 	Pablo
>
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