Hi Everyone,
It's not quite a been a year since the last cobbler survey, but things have been moving exponentially lately, so I figure it's a good time for another! As before, please reply off list (not here, to mdehaan@redhat.com instead) and I'll post a anonymized summary of results later.
The goal of this survey is understand how everyone is using things, which features get used most, and to better be able to plan and understand where we need to go in the future. It helps me understand what aspects are most important and what other tools are in use along with Cobbler.
So, it would be fantastic if absolutely everyone on this list replies -- that would be awesome. Even if you aren't on this list and are reading through gmane, shoot me an email --- it would be greatly appreciated.
Results will be shared in a couple of weeks, once I have a chance to aggregate and summarize them. Again, any specifics you wish to share about your deployment help me understand you enormously, I value them, and they won't be shared when I do share the summary.
Thanks!
--Michael
=== START ==
(1) What is your company/installbase and what do you? Be as specific or non-specific as you like, we won't share specifics but want to get an idea of what sectors things are being used in.
(2) How did you find about Cobbler and how long have you been using it? (or Just trying it out now, that's good to know also).
(3) How many machines do you have managed by Cobbler?
(4) Do you use the Cobbler web interface?
(5) Do you use the DHCP management feature?
(6) Do you use the DNS management feature?
(7) Do you use the Power management feature?
(8) Do you use "koan --replace-self"?
(9) Do you use "cobbler replicate" ?
(10) Do you use "cobbler buildiso" ?
(11) Do you use cobbler to mirror repositories ("cobbler repo add / cobbler reposync") ?
(12) Do you use either the built-in config management tool (--template-files) or the Puppet integration (--mgmt-classes) feature?
(13) Do you use koan to install virtual machines? (If so, what Xen or KVM or VMware?) If not, what kind of virtualization do you use?
(14) What's the output of the following? You may choose to censor the system counts if you want, but I still would like a feel as to whether system records are well leveraged.
sudo cobbler distro report | wc -l sudo cobbler profile report | wc -l sudo cobbler system report | wc -l sudo cobbler image report | wc -l sudo cobbler repo report | wc -l
(15) Are you interested in "Cloud" type applications, if so, which? (EC2? Internally hosted?)
(16) What Open Source or proprietary software do you use to manage your updates? (yum, Spacewalk/Satellite, etc?)
(17) What Open Source or proprietary software do you use for config management (in-house solutions, cfengine, puppet, etc?)
(18) What Open Source or proprietary software do you use for monitoring?
(19) Just out of curiosity, how interested are you in "ITIL" at your organization and how do you see this affecting Cobbler, if at all?
(20) Are the any applications you'd like to see Cobbler integration better with? If so, how?
(21) What's your number one requested Cobbler feature?
(22) Anything else you'd like to add?
=== END ===
Michael DeHaan wrote:
Hi Everyone,
It's not quite a been a year since the last cobbler survey, but things have been moving exponentially lately, so I figure it's a good time for another! As before, please reply off list (not here, to mdehaan@redhat.com instead) and I'll post a anonymized summary of results later.
The goal of this survey is understand how everyone is using things, which features get used most, and to better be able to plan and understand where we need to go in the future. It helps me understand what aspects are most important and what other tools are in use along with Cobbler.
So, it would be fantastic if absolutely everyone on this list replies -- that would be awesome. Even if you aren't on this list and are reading through gmane, shoot me an email --- it would be greatly appreciated.
Results will be shared in a couple of weeks, once I have a chance to aggregate and summarize them. Again, any specifics you wish to share about your deployment help me understand you enormously, I value them, and they won't be shared when I do share the summary.
Thanks!
--Michael
=== START ==
(1) What is your company/installbase and what do you? Be as specific or non-specific as you like, we won't share specifics but want to get an idea of what sectors things are being used in.
(2) How did you find about Cobbler and how long have you been using it? (or Just trying it out now, that's good to know also).
(3) How many machines do you have managed by Cobbler?
(4) Do you use the Cobbler web interface?
(5) Do you use the DHCP management feature?
(6) Do you use the DNS management feature?
(7) Do you use the Power management feature?
(8) Do you use "koan --replace-self"?
(9) Do you use "cobbler replicate" ?
(10) Do you use "cobbler buildiso" ?
(11) Do you use cobbler to mirror repositories ("cobbler repo add / cobbler reposync") ?
(12) Do you use either the built-in config management tool (--template-files) or the Puppet integration (--mgmt-classes) feature?
(13) Do you use koan to install virtual machines? (If so, what Xen or KVM or VMware?) If not, what kind of virtualization do you use?
(14) What's the output of the following? You may choose to censor the system counts if you want, but I still would like a feel as to whether system records are well leveraged.
sudo cobbler distro report | wc -l sudo cobbler profile report | wc -l sudo cobbler system report | wc -l sudo cobbler image report | wc -l sudo cobbler repo report | wc -l
I botched the survey, too, sorry!
sudo cobbler distro list | wc -l sudo cobbler profile list | wc -l sudo cobbler system list | wc -l sudo cobbler image list | wc -l sudo cobbler repo list | wc -l
Basically I'd like to know how many cobbler objects you have of each type.
(15) Are you interested in "Cloud" type applications, if so, which? (EC2? Internally hosted?)
(16) What Open Source or proprietary software do you use to manage your updates? (yum, Spacewalk/Satellite, etc?)
(17) What Open Source or proprietary software do you use for config management (in-house solutions, cfengine, puppet, etc?)
(18) What Open Source or proprietary software do you use for monitoring?
(19) Just out of curiosity, how interested are you in "ITIL" at your organization and how do you see this affecting Cobbler, if at all?
(20) Are the any applications you'd like to see Cobbler integration better with? If so, how?
(21) What's your number one requested Cobbler feature?
(22) Anything else you'd like to add?
=== END ===
cobbler mailing list cobbler@lists.fedorahosted.org https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 04:41:55PM -0400, Michael DeHaan wrote:
Michael DeHaan wrote:
Hi Everyone,
Hi Michael,
=== START ==
(1) What is your company/installbase and what do you? Be as specific or non-specific as you like, we won't share specifics but want to get an idea of what sectors things are being used in.
Linux Engineer/Sysadmin. Designing so the actual sysadmins can do their work as good as they can, educating etc. My corporation calls itself 'it solution provider'. Thousends of linux-installations i think, but many are nfs-root driven so wont be cobbler-affected.
(2) How did you find about Cobbler and how long have you been using it? (or Just trying it out now, that's good to know also).
We are just deploying it for company-use. Found out 'on the net' of course, its the most promising thing, also providing basis for both RHEL and SLES.
(3) How many machines do you have managed by Cobbler?
Only testingboxes now.
(4) Do you use the Cobbler web interface?
No and not planned.
(5) Do you use the DHCP management feature?
Yes.
(6) Do you use the DNS management feature?
No, maybe sometime in future (one subdomain per cobbler-slave).
(7) Do you use the Power management feature? (8) Do you use "koan --replace-self"?
2x no.
(9) Do you use "cobbler replicate" ?
Looked into it, found only syncing of all distros working. Also distro-removing of replicated distros didnt clean up the discspace. So we like to rsync just needed distros to the cobbler- slaves, and adding those - not mirroring in cobbler again.
(10) Do you use "cobbler buildiso" ?
Told noone on the feature yet because we really want to get through with pxe for all boxen this time... probably at some point we do not get around buildiso anyway. Last time i checked some packages were missing on the rhel5+satellite(current patches)+epel repos we use thou.
(11) Do you use cobbler to mirror repositories ("cobbler repo add / cobbler reposync") ?
Yes, for rhel distros, great thing. Interestingly, after 'createrepo sles11_directory' sles11 doesnt accept that directory any longer for installation. sles11 brings in no yum, also not rug, the tool from sles10, they bring in 'zypper'.
(12) Do you use either the built-in config management tool (--template-files)
no. just postinstalls with snippets yet.
or the Puppet integration (--mgmt-classes) feature?
Also no, looks like cfengine(2) will be used as its also widely available for the unixes also provided in our shop.
(13) Do you use koan to install virtual machines? (If so, what Xen or KVM or VMware?) If not, what kind of virtualization do you use?
We are designing and running vmware_server_2 on cobbler-master and the cobbler slaves. So just using the virtual machines as cheap and fast replacement for real servers, also booting via pxe and testing installations. In production vmware esx virtualmachines will be installed, no xen or kvm in production.
Was setting up a cobbler-slave and via-pxe-installed-virtual-machine on my thinkpad x200 the other day, both virtualized on KVM. Interesting thing, cobbler-slave could provide valid dhcp/bootp to the pxe-booted-vm, but could not transfer files via tftp among the 2. Also not 2 kvm-booted linux live-cds. Providing the tftp-dir from my hostsystem and the pxe-booting and deployment works well.
(14) What's the output of the following? You may choose to censor the system counts if you want, but I still would like a feel as to whether system records are well leveraged.
sudo cobbler distro list | wc -l
12 # rhel4, rhel5, sles10, sles11, all amd64 and x86
sudo cobbler profile list | wc -l
12
sudo cobbler system list | wc -l
3 # just testing yet
sudo cobbler image list | wc -l
0
sudo cobbler repo list | wc -l
5
(15) Are you interested in "Cloud" type applications, if so, which? (EC2? Internally hosted?)
no. running nfs-rooted stuff on quite some boxen, reminds me of stateless ideas.
(16) What Open Source or proprietary software do you use to manage your updates? (yum, Spacewalk/Satellite, etc?)
yum, satellite, probalby suse zlm soon. Would like to just copy the newest rpms together, createrepo those and use that for updating.
(17) What Open Source or proprietary software do you use for config management (in-house solutions, cfengine, puppet, etc?)
ssh-scripts yet. cfengine in future.
(18) What Open Source or proprietary software do you use for monitoring?
some proprietary.
(19) Just out of curiosity, how interested are you in "ITIL" at your organization and how do you see this affecting Cobbler, if at all?
Processes have to fullfill itil. deployment will be a part of it. One thing we hoped reposync to do was flagging distros as 'current', 'new' and 'offload' on cobbler-master and delivering this to slaves (flagging in comment-field). Will hanle this different now. Not directly itil-related but a result of the processes we have to live..
(20) Are the any applications you'd like to see Cobbler integration better with? If so, how?
Biggest issue now will be bringing sles-deployment to a better level, network interface assignments etc.
(21) What's your number one requested Cobbler feature?
Cant really think of one just now :)
(22) Anything else you'd like to add?
Thanks you guys for starting this, catalysing community and assigning own developers to it.
Christian
cobbler@lists.fedorahosted.org