Complement Foreman with lab 'repository' project?

While we are looking to deploy foreman to manage our hosts, we've realized
we lack the 'other side' - some kind of a repository that will let us know
to which port in a switch that host is connected to, to which power outlet
in our APC power control, to which FC port the FC cable is connected to,
which UPS is protecting each host, etc.
Does anyone on the list has a similar experience and possibly a solution
that will integrate with Foreman? Ideally,provisioning a host would
integrate in both systems - software provisioning via Foreman, and Hardware
via 'the other tool'.
Y.

Hi Yaniv,

See answers inline.

> While we are looking to deploy foreman to manage our hosts, we've realized
> we lack the 'other side' - some kind of a repository that will let us know
> to which port in a switch that host is connected to,

this is usually done via cdpr / llpd protocols, later on this can be added
as a custom fact [1] to puppet and then you could simply search based on
facts.

to which power outlet in our APC power control

If there is no programmatic way to figure it out (e.g. it has no api and a
pure manual where did i connect this), this can be done via plain
parameters in foreman (general purpose key - value pairs) or, you could
consider extending foreman via a plugin[2]. its pretty simple to add a few
more screens and attach some data to hosts (assuming you know a bit of
ruby).

> , to which FC port the FC cable is connected to, which UPS is protecting
> each host, etc.

if there is an automate way to figure that info, you could consider two
options.

  1. just like switch port, use a custom fact to get the info
  2. if you want to create the lun etc when creating a host in foreman, you
    could consider extending foreman to take additional additional actions,
    this could either be via another plugin or the general purpose
    foreman-hooks plugin [3] or via extending the smart proxy in foreman.

Does anyone on the list has a similar experience and possibly a solution
> that will integrate with Foreman? Ideally,provisioning a host would
> integrate in both systems - software provisioning via Foreman, and Hardware
> via 'the other tool'.
> Y.
>

Hope this helps, if there are other ideas / usage cases, I'll be happy for
feedback.

[1]


[2] Plugins - Foreman
[3] https://github.com/domcleal/foreman_hooks

ยทยทยท On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 2:13 PM, Yaniv Kaul wrote: