cobbler-devel-bounces@lists.fedorahosted.org wrote on 05/28/2009 03:14:42 PM:
Jeff Schroeder wrote:
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Scott Henson shenson@redhat.com
wrote:
This morning I had a quick idea that I thought I might throw out and
see
if anyone else could use it. Basically the idea is having cobbler provision storage for hosts based upon management classes or some
other
configuration management construct. Cobbler would need to be taught about accessing SAN and NAS devices to construct volumes and SAN
luns,
and then have those volumes mounted and/or formatted during the provisioning process of the host. Anyone think it is a good idea or have any comments on it?
Sounds like something you should wrap around cobbler and not put inside it. At Ticketmaster, we used a tool for this aptly named provision[1]. For virtual machines, libvirtd should do the storage stuff for you. Perhaps someone should rewrite provision in python or just add in hooks to use non-netapp (generic linux) storage. It also seems like the kind of thing Satellite or the open source project it sits ontop of should implement. What do you think?
[1] http://code.ticketmaster.com/index.php?page=provision-overview
To me, Scott's idea is interesting and gets us out of a rut (that being,
where does Cobbler go from here). I'm interested more in finding out who /does/ like it, since silence on a list implies the No. We're likely to try this out and then see who uses it. Namely I'm interested in ideas on where we can take similar ideas.
If we limited ourselves to the conventional view of how things are managed today, we are very unlikely to /change/ the way things are
managed.
If we stopped at just kickstart, we wouldn't be where we are today. Our goal is simply -- how much can we automate within a very simple framework. Messaging wise, Cobbler is a bunch of glue that makes setting up new systems easier. Usage of lots of parts of it are optional, and not required to be understood for newcomers, or used in all setups... so I think it's fine (and highly
beneficial) to experiment and see where we can take things.
As for what should sit where, I can't agree with you.
Libvirt doing storage is done at the wrong level, because we also care about providing storage to hosts. It's also persuing networking configuration, which in many ways is not correct either, as we also care
about networking for hosts. Further, while cobbler is consumed by Satellite, we do not limit what deployment/setup/systems-management tasks we can do. We want to do things at a level which are abstracted for both physical and virtual machines.
So, what about Satellite? Satellite is a great app... but one easy reason there -- it's much harder to implement things in Spacewalk/Satellite, it's not a good codebase for rapid prototyping (not
the fault of folks that work on it, it just does a LOT). Since we are
already doing things like DHCP, DNS, power, puppet-integration, and so forth (resources needed for the machine before it exists) and moving towards Network objects, modelling storage setup also seems useful to me. Things we do for Cobbler /do/ make it into Satellite, as we expose those in the Satellite GUIs and so forth, and make them supportable.
So this "do one thing" thing...
Ultimately our goal is to automate what we can automate, and gather information from people wherever we can find it. In this sense, Cobbler is a snowball for any sort of automating annoying repeated tasks that you need to do to get systems up and running, and makes it especially nice when folks are starting from scratch and needing OSS tools to do this. We want to prevent building custom automation infrastructure by providing a community where we can all share in that development.
If Cobbler's definition expands over time, I see that as progress.
I don't think we want another competing management tool (and adding a subproject adds overhead) when you can use Cobbler without using all of it's features. For instance, DHCP/DNS management today are totally optional. I do think possibly incorporating some of those ideas from your TicketMaster app could be excellent though, and I definitely welcome all of that. We do want to absorb all of the good (Free) ideas
wherever they lie and accumulate all that knowledge together.
--Michael
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+1 from here for Scott's idea. I happen to be knee-deep in cobblering 64 HP blades with Emulex FC mezzanine cards connecting multiple volumes triple-multipath to an IBM XIV :-)