Hi,
I'm trying to use foreman in place of the Rocks CentOS based system.
So far it is superior in many aspects, but one feature that I really
miss is : Tell a machine name/profile, turn it on, and the next DHCP
request will be it.
I did some search already and found this that is supposed to do the job :
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/foreman-dev/Kg_ceahtzQQ
But I found it a bit dangerous to use in the only production
environment I have. Deployment looks also reasonably tricky for the
ones not used. Anyway I wanted to thank and congratulate the developer
for the initiative and implementation.
I was wondering if there is any progress on that (to put/have it more
mainstream) or there's any stable alternative at the moment.
Thanks,
Samir
Hi Samir,
> I'm trying to use foreman in place of the Rocks CentOS based system.
>
So far it is superior in many aspects, but one feature that I really
> miss is : Tell a machine name/profile, turn it on, and the next DHCP
> request will be it.
>
I'm not very familiar with ROCKS, but it sounds like a Metal-as-a-Service
type of feature, where 'unknown' machines are booted to an initial
memory-only image to register with a central system. If that's what you're
after, read on 
I did some search already and found this that is supposed to do the job :
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/foreman-dev/Kg_ceahtzQQ
I was wondering if there is any progress on that (to put/have it
> more mainstream) or there's any stable alternative at the moment.
Your timing is perfect - we hope to do an official beta release of this
project in the next week or so. For now, the current implementation is
available from my Github page[1]. There's a Readme with setup instructions,
so if anything is unclear, do send another mail. The downside is that it
currently requires the very latest git version of Foreman (and I'm waiting
on one more merge to git as well[2])
I wanted to thank and congratulate the developer
for the initiative and implementation.
>
Thanks! We're really excited about it, as it's fills in a big piece of
Foreman's missing functionality. If you want to see some screenshots of the
Discovery Plugin in action, see my FOSDEM presentation[3]
Regards,
Greg
[1]https://github.com/GregSutcliffe/foreman_discovery
[2]https://github.com/theforeman/foreman/pull/490
[3]
http://video.fosdem.org/2013/lightningtalks/Managing_your_metal_flexibly.webm
···
On 17 April 2013 10:30, Samir Cury wrote:
Hi Greg,
About Rocks, Maybe this gives some inspiration, how I remember Rocks
to work is, it
does the same job as the smart-proxy when managing fixed
hostnames/IP/MAC Address, but it has a different approach when
deploying systems. By 2009 one could issue a command named
"insert-ethers" – changed.
What it does is, it has a default template named "compute" which
deploys a basic CentOS + some Rocks specific RPMs, nothing different
of a kickstart. One can put together other templates, more basic or
more complex, the template is informed when you issue insert-ethers or
defaults to compute.
The thing is, when you issue insert-ethers (and the process is
completely interactive by the server side), rocks stay listening the
network (DHCP requests). Once the node you want issues the DHCP
request, Rocks captures the mac address and sets the other parameters
(automatically or given hostname, IP from DHCP range). and inserts all
this information in the database, from there on, both systems are
pretty much alike.
I think that the interactive step should be avoided if possible. I
will study better your plugin before proposing anything, just
reporting here how Rocks works for now.
I think that the basic difference is that the provisioning is done at
once with the default image (and it sounds like that your plugin can
be adapted).
For example, instead of a DSL just for the sysadmin go there and
change it to some CentOS and rebuild, we could use directly the CentOS
image.
Anyway, I think I need to use it/understand it more, but I'm happy
that the feature is already around.
Cheers,
Samir
···
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Greg Sutcliffe wrote:
> Hi Samir,
>
> On 17 April 2013 10:30, Samir Cury wrote:
>>
>> I'm trying to use foreman in place of the Rocks CentOS based system.
>>
>> So far it is superior in many aspects, but one feature that I really
>> miss is : Tell a machine name/profile, turn it on, and the next DHCP
>> request will be it.
>
>
> I'm not very familiar with ROCKS, but it sounds like a Metal-as-a-Service
> type of feature, where 'unknown' machines are booted to an initial
> memory-only image to register with a central system. If that's what you're
> after, read on :)
>
>> I did some search already and found this that is supposed to do the job :
>>
>>
>> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/foreman-dev/Kg_ceahtzQQ
>>
>> I was wondering if there is any progress on that (to put/have it more
>> mainstream) or there's any stable alternative at the moment.
>
>
> Your timing is perfect - we hope to do an official beta release of this
> project in the next week or so. For now, the current implementation is
> available from my Github page[1]. There's a Readme with setup instructions,
> so if anything is unclear, do send another mail. The downside is that it
> currently requires the very latest git version of Foreman (and I'm waiting
> on one more merge to git as well[2])
>
>> I wanted to thank and congratulate the developer
>>
>> for the initiative and implementation.
>
>
> Thanks! We're really excited about it, as it's fills in a big piece of
> Foreman's missing functionality. If you want to see some screenshots of the
> Discovery Plugin in action, see my FOSDEM presentation[3]
>
> Regards,
> Greg
>
> [1]https://github.com/GregSutcliffe/foreman_discovery
> [2]https://github.com/theforeman/foreman/pull/490
> [3]http://video.fosdem.org/2013/lightningtalks/Managing_your_metal_flexibly.webm
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Foreman users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to foreman-users+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to foreman-users@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/foreman-users?hl=en.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
>
>
> Hi Greg,
>
> About Rocks, Maybe this gives some inspiration, how I remember Rocks
> to work is
<snip>
Thanks for that, it helps complete the picture.
I think that the basic difference is that the provisioning is done at
> once with the default image (and it sounds like that your plugin can
> be adapted).
Automated provision of machines which match a certain profile (from Facter
data) is definitely on the TODO list - so for example you might add a rule
that says any machines with > 24Gb of memory get RHEL deployed
automatically, and so on. We'd also like to add quotas to that, so you can
limit it to, say, the first 10 matching machines, and then the rule goes
inactive.
That's a way off yet though
Greg
···
On 17 April 2013 11:15, Samir Cury wrote:
