[katello-devel] Provisioning Suggestion

[Duncan.Innes at virginmoney.com]

Guys,

Have been thinking about how to eliminate some of the key-presses in our 
Satellite kickstart installs and came up with the following (note: I'm not 
fully up to speed on Foreman provisioning, so don't know if this is 
already covered):

I wondered if it would add any useful functionality to be able to create a 
boot.kernel.org-style image on the Katello server.  The resultant image 
would then boot a system and go direct to the Katello server for 
instructions.  I know it's a basic copy of PXE booting, but it allows this 
functionality to exist in a few key areas.

1. Deploying to VMware machines.  I could create a template with this boot 
image on.  Firing up a machine created from this template would head 
direct for the Katello server for provisioning.  PXE isn't the default 
boot method for a VMware guest.  Using an image like this would get around 
having to configure the machine to boot into BIOS and then tweak the BIOS 
settings to boot PXE first.
2. Situations where PXE is not permitted.  No - there aren't many.  Or so 
I thought.  When adding the PXE settings to your corporate DHCP servers 
isn't permitted, you can be left high and dry when trying to provision new 
machines.  An ISO image to boot from that heads directly to the Katello 
server for menu etc would remove the task of having to alter syslinux 
ISO's whenever a new kickstart is created, for example.

The value-add would be that both these scenarios would only need to be 
done once (barring a change of hostname for the Katello server).  All the 
logic, kickstarts, menu system (if wanted) stay on the Katello server.

Would this be at all useful to Katello - or have I missed a trick with 
Foreman?

Cheers

Duncan Innes | Linux Architect | Virgin Money

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