Using cobbler for deploying filesystem/disk images?

Hello,


Is it possible to use cobbler to deploy filesystem/partition/disk
images, e.g. images made from g4l or clonezilla.  I'd like to use the
cobbler as the single server for deploying images via pxe boot. With
images I'll also have to deal with drivers of different geometries but
clonezilla has code to do that. Is using such images faster than
deploying via kickstart for a large number of machines (hundreds).

-Don Khan

[Rainer Duffner]

khan_don(a)emc.com schrieb:
>  Hello,
>
>
>  Is it possible to use cobbler to deploy filesystem/partition/disk
>  images, e.g. images made from g4l or clonezilla.  I'd like to use the
>  cobbler as the single server for deploying images via pxe boot. With
>  images I'll also have to deal with drivers of different geometries but
>  clonezilla has code to do that. Is using such images faster than
>  deploying via kickstart for a large number of machines (hundreds).
>     
For hundrets of machines, using kickstart (and maybe a load-balanced
farm of distribution-servers) will beat clonezilla hands down.
In fact, I'd say that cobbler was _designed_ for such massive rollouts.
I'd use machines with 8 or more GB RAM, so that the whole distribution
would fit into RAM after it has been served the first time.
I don't know about multicasting - has anybody done multicasting (the
"real" ghost can do that) on such a large scale? I imagine that you run
out of switch-backplane bandwidth at some point.


Rainer

[Michael DeHaan]

Rainer Duffner wrote:
>  khan_don(a)emc.com schrieb:
>    
> > Hello,
> >
> >
> > Is it possible to use cobbler to deploy filesystem/partition/disk
> > images, e.g. images made from g4l or clonezilla.  I'd like to use the
> > cobbler as the single server for deploying images via pxe boot. With
> > images I'll also have to deal with drivers of different geometries but
> > clonezilla has code to do that. Is using such images faster than
> > deploying via kickstart for a large number of machines (hundreds).
> >   
> >     
>
>  For hundrets of machines, using kickstart (and maybe a load-balanced
>  farm of distribution-servers) will beat clonezilla hands down.
>  In fact, I'd say that cobbler was _designed_ for such massive rollouts.
>  I'd use machines with 8 or more GB RAM, so that the whole distribution
>  would fit into RAM after it has been served the first time.
>  I don't know about multicasting - has anybody done multicasting (the
>  "real" ghost can do that) on such a large scale? I imagine that you run
>  out of switch-backplane bandwidth at some point.
>
>
>  Rainer
>  _______________________________________________
>  cobbler mailing list
>  cobbler(a)lists.fedorahosted.org
>  https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
>     
Indeed. You don't want to be using cloner tools whenever you can avoid 
it because -- (A) it's really not all that much faster, and (B) can 
cause tremendous problems when you want to reproduce a build 
configuration that is /slightly/ different or figure out what you have 
actually cloned. Going through kickstart, or kickstart + a configuration 
management system (like Puppet) ensures that you have your configuration 
written down in terms of easily reproducible rules that allow you to 
move between different distributions, different hardware, and make 
adjustments. Images are a last resort.

That all being said, Andrew Brown was working on adding some image based 
cloning tools for use with Cobbler powered by Live CD tech -- for cases 
were supporting cloning is required (say, you have a handful of Windows 
machines that you have not virtualized yet). 
https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/wiki/PhysicalSystemCloneFeature -- this 
can be useful if you have one or two machines that you simply /must/ 
copy this way and want something simple -- but is not something I would 
ever recommend as standard practice. Ideally you would run these 
machines as virtual guests, where it becomes much simpler ... 
https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/wiki/AllAboutImages ... this page 
describes how Cobbler can track a library of ISO's stored on NFS and 
kick off virtual installations from those ISO's. In the case of Windows 
(really the only reason I think you'd want to do this), this would be a 
sysprep-like modified ISO that was modified to start a fully automated 
installation.

For multicast cloning, what you are thinking of is udpcast -- though 
building the target images for udpcast that support all possible target 
NICs is an annoyance. I have not personally tried it in such scales, I 
have heard that it is somewhat abusive on the network. If someone wants 
to persue a good way to integrate it into Cobbler, I'm still willing to 
consider it, though I think the best strategy is to run non-Linux 
operating systems fully virtualizated and deal with them that way (where 
image management is MUCH easier) and for the Linux hosts and guests to 
use kickstart as much as possible -- or in the case of non-kickstart 
based operating systems, AutoYast, preseed, or what have you -- all of 
which Cobbler can deal with.

--Michael