[Spacewalk-list] "bareMetalProvisioning" Wiki page

[Michael DeHaan]

Mike McCune wrote:
> Michael DeHaan wrote:
>> Michael DeHaan wrote:
>>> I was reading over the Cobbler Wiki page and found 
>>> https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/wiki/bareMetalBrainstorming
>>>
>>> I am not sure what the page is trying to discuss -- or why this is a 
>>> new thing specific to metal as the things mentioned are no different 
>>> in Spacewalk if doing reinstalls or guests.   If it's the general 
>>> topic of "how do I manage diverse kickstart configurations that may 
>>> span multiple sites" the answer is "templating", and "it varies 
>>> greatly based on site". I can see where the wizard based 
>>> kickstart-generator engine in Satellite would have some workflow 
>>> problems with this, yes.   Cobbler is designed to solve all of 
>>> those, so I think the question can be closed?
>>>
>>> --Michael
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>> Anyone care to comment or shall I Wiki Garden this as closed?
>>
>> --Michael
>>
>
> oops, this got missed by me.  Basically that page was a brainstorming 
> session Dave and myself had over the workflow of doing PXE based 
> installs.  We were curious about how customers setup and manage large 
> scale (and small) PXE environments and if what we have built with 
> spacewalk and cobbler will suit their needs.
>
> Basically a way to further refine future changes to spacewalk-cobbler 
> to better meet the needs of our users beyond Spacewalk 0.4 and 0.5.  
> We were contemplating doing some sort of survey of our Spacewalk, 
> Satellite, Cobbler and other users on how they use (or don't use) our 
> products to do their kickstarts.
>
> perhaps this wiki page and a survey isn't the right place for that 
> kind of thing.  It might be worth doing this kind of research *after* 
> Spacewalk 0.5 is out and Satellite 5.3 is available so more people 
> have our product in front of them vs talking to people about things 
> they may not have access too.
>
> Mike


I think you're right, let them try to the tools and if that indicates 
there is a workflow improvement to be made in Spacewalk you'll hear 
about it.  I was looking over that and even the DHCP lab setup page and 
on a whole I found them to be too complicated -- setting up those things 
are pretty easy to do, and I tried to make appropriate edits/comments.

FWIW, there are some quite large (and small) setups using Cobbler, and I 
don't see the Spacewalk-using-Cobbler workflow as conflicting with that.

Not to scare folks, but one recent mailing list post talked about 
someone looking to have their setup up to 2 cobbler masters and 18 slave 
servers.  I don't think simple bare metal workflow is a user concern -- 
people get it.    The interesting challenge I think we have is finding 
ways to manage multiple geographies/datacenters (like the above setup), 
with DHCP and DNS management turned on, and to do things like Beaker can 
do with controlling multiple cobbler servers.    Of course this is a 
good problem to have.  

To go out on a tangent, recent discussion on Cobbler list about 
supporting QMF might serve as a very nice way to do that kind of 
communication, replacing rubygem-cobbler and Spacewalks cobbler 
interface code with something a bit more multi-server aware.   I hope to 
do some exploration in the next few weeks.

If Spacewalk can just manage the masters, the slaves should be 
manageable automatically by the cobbler master.   

Anyhow, I really don't see workflow being a problem -- and if you do 
want to discuss how people are doing baremetal, let me know.  It's 
really a simpler thing than just reinstalls, so I can't see any new 
workflow problems coming up -- but if they do, I think you'd hear about 
them :)    The summary is that the workflow problems we really want to 
discuss are the ones dealing with multiple geographies, the workflow of 
how you deal with a single server spacewalk install is pretty much 
solid, I think, but we'll hear what people say.

--Michael