Michael DeHaan wrote: > Jeff Schroeder wrote: >> On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 9:06 AM, Michael DeHaan <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> This is a development branch thing but it's related to Cobbler's plan >>> moving forward, so it seems best to discuss here. >>> >>> So ... there's been some good work going so far towards supporting some >>> variants of Windows, though I see it may perhaps be somewhat of an >>> evolutionary dead-end. >>> >>> The web page for RIS-Linux in particular does not mention Vista or >>> 2008. Further, I am much more interested in supporting Windows >>> virtually >>> than physically -- this should be natural with the increasing interest >>> in virtualization and recent interoperability agreements with >>> Microsoft. >>> >>> For the devel branch (1.7), I'd rather we refocus our efforts into >>> making sure the experience for Windows installs, virtually, is as good >>> as possible. >>> >>> The upside of this is that most of the infrastructure is already in >>> place -- we can already do ISO based fullvirt installs ("cobbler image >>> add" with the ISO file >>> residing on NFS) and a next step is to teach it about a virtual floppy >>> drive with the SIF answer file on the drive, so it can be fully >>> scripted. >>> >>> We already also have the "virt-clone" image type, for being able to >>> take >>> an existing disk image and repeatedly clone that image with koan, >>> keeping the same >>> source image on NFS. (The syntax here is "koan --image=foo --virt", >>> just like with the ISO based installs for virt). >>> >>> The goal here is to not invest too much effort in supporting dead-end >>> deployment areas and writing code to cater to say, XP vs Vista vs 2003 >>> vs 2008, but handle >>> things generically, with answer files, and images, things we already >>> do. On the plus side, there's also much less work in doing this and >>> no additional dependencies >>> or things to configure and set up. >>> >>> Rather than physical deployments this encourages deploying Windows on >>> Linux hosts, which makes the Windows machines easier to manage since >>> you >>> can run >>> tools like libvirt and Func on the hosts. See >>> http://www.redhat.com/promo/svvp/ >>> >>> Windows belongs running on virt. >>> >> >> To play devil's advocate (I am not in this situation) what about the >> poor people who just want to make deploying windows on physical hosts >> easier? It seems like this direction hurts those. > > We don't really have a vested interest in making Windows physical > deployments easy to deploy. > > >> Why don't we do a >> dual pronged approach? Make the virtualized windows experience smooth >> as butter but continue using ris-linux for bare metal windows? Just my >> 2 cents. >> >> > > Ultimately it's about what is the best use of time. Keeping things > small and focused in Cobbler is something > we must always do, and sometimes this means knowing what we should and > shouldn't work on. > > This list becoming 1/2 about Windows questions would not be good -- > and it distracts us from the core mission. > > The virtualization seems ideally suited for dealing with such things, > and it keeps them simple -- so we can concentrate > on other, perhaps more important, work items. (Like that nice shiny > RFE list). > > --Michael > > > >
I should also point out that I spelled 'strategery' wrong. Apologies to George :) _______________________________________________ cobbler mailing list [email protected] https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
