Server Provisioning - Slightly OT

[John Summerfield]

Mike M wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Since this list deals with OS provisioning (albeit Red Hat-focused), I
> figured this would be the right group of people to get some opinions
> from.
> 
> I work in a data center with >2000 servers, about 90% of which are
> running some variation of Red Hat Linux, from 7.3 to ES 4.  The
> remainder are Windows Server 2003 and Solaris 10 x86.   As you can
> tell, OS provisioning is very important for a shop of this size.
> 
> Using kickstart, we have been able to make our larger Linux
> deployments very quick, because there is usually a day or two in the
> project plan that allows us to get the legwork done in advance.
> However, we run into pretty severe problems when we only have one or
> two servers that need to be provisioned in one shot.  This is because
> there is a lot of stuff that needs to be done in advance in the
> standard kickstart process - you need to harvest MAC addresses, enable
> portfast on the switch, create DNS entries, create a kickstart config,
> etc.  While we could certainly install from CD, there is the
> possibility of non-standard package selections, and a by-hand %post of
> all non-Red Hat packages and tweaks.
> 
> Now, as I see it, there are two options in the provisioning world -
> image-based (ghost, partimage), or native installation (kickstart,
> RIS).  Each option seems to have pros and cons.
> 
> So here are my questions to the group:
> 
> If you run a multi-platform server farm, how do you provision the OS?
> Have you purchased a product, used one specific package, or cobbled
> your own from free tools?  Do you use image-based technology, and if
> so, how hard do you find image management?  If you use images, how do
> you tackle "uniqueness" (hostnames, IP addresses, etc.) of
> newly-provisioned machines?

I only do tens of machines.

I use dhcp on Linux (Debian) for Windows and Linux. I've not tried 
chaining from pxelinux to the MS boot code, but I suspect it can be 
done. What gets installed here depends, in part, which network the 
machine boots on.

I don't understand why people need to harvest the MAC addresses; I 
choose from the pxelinux menu.

I _do_ configure dhcp to give different replies (including IP address, 
filename etc) depending what's asking: the BIOS gets a different answer 
from what I tell Linux. You can also configure it to give different 
answers for Mac's boot code, and I expect, for *sparc*. Probably for NIC 
vendor too - an expression involving the hardware address should work.

Here's a fragment to recognise an Intelish box:
class "pxeclients"
         {
                 match if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 
9) = "PXEClient";
                 option vendor-class-identifier "PXEClient";
# At least one of the vendor-specific option must be set.       We set
# the MCAST IP address to 0.0.0.0 to tell the bootrom to still use
# TFTP (address 0.0.0.0 is considered as "no address")
#               option PXE.mtftp-ip 192.168.9.1; vendor-option-space PXE;
                 option PXE.mtftp-ip 0.0.0.0; vendor-option-space PXE;
         }

Here are some more:-)

class "anaconda"
         {
                 match if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 
8) = "anaconda";
                 option vendor-class-identifier "anaconda";
         }

class "debian-installer"
         {
                 match if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 
3) = "d-i";
                 option root-path 
"192.168.9.4:/tftpboot/PXE/linux-rootfs/kubuntu/edgy";
                 option interface-mtu 1500;
         }

Etherboot:
# Filched from http://clic.mandrakesoft.com/documentation/pxe/ch04.html
class "Etherboot"
         {
                  match if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 
13) = "Etherboot-5.0";
                  option vendor-encapsulated-options 
3c:09:45:74:68:65:72:62:6f:6f:74:ff;
                  option vendor-class-identifier "Etherboot-5.0";
                  filename "tftpboot.vc";
         }


I configured this in hopes:

         pool {
                 allow members of "anaconda";
                 deny  members of "pxeclients";
                 default-lease-time 900;
                 filename "http://Fedora.demo.lan/5/i386/os/Fedora/";
                 max-lease-time 1800;
                 range 192.168.9.170 192.168.9.179;
                 option log-servers 192.168.9.4;
         }


Red Hat's objection was the ill-founded notion they'd need to register 
something with IANA. Not so.






> 
> Any advice you can give will be much appreciated.  I'd love to hear
> from anyone, especially those with large mixed environments.  As you
> can imagine, we have to use different methods for each OS (Kickstart,
> Jumpstart, and RIS/Ghost), and I would love to see something that can
> handle them all, or at least simplify and unify the three methods.
> 
> Mike
> 
> P.S. And yes, as much as it may seem otherwise, I really don't have
> rose-colored glasses on...I understand that there's probably no *easy*
> way to do it, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. ;)
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Kickstart-list mailing list
> Kickstart-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/kickstart-list
> 


-- 

Cheers
John

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