> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:cobbler-
> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael DeHaan
> Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 11:42 AM
> To: [email protected]; cobbler mailing list
> Subject: Re: Stategery regarding Windows support for mixed
environments
>
> James Cammarata wrote:
> > On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:06:39 -0400, 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.
I did originally wonder why there was a focus on RIS and not WDS.
Personally, that works well for me, because Vista is being avoided like
the plague in many circles including my own company. I understand that
focusing on re-implementing the M$ installation method du jour, could be
frustrating, but it seemed that the idea was to leverage the ris-linux
package which was already doing much of the work. I wouldn't expect a
WDS update for cobbler until a wds-linux project is in a well-working
state.
> >>
> >> 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. In general, for non-Linux OS's,
> we
> >> should also concentrate on virt.
> >>
> >> --Michael
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> cobbler mailing list
> >> [email protected]
> >> https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
> >>
> >
> > Here are my thoughts on why this may be the correct long term goal,
> but bad
> > for the short term (and by short term I mean the next 5 years).
> Small-Mid
> > size corporations are quite often heterogenous, with many different
> OS'es
> > running in the server room/data center. This is also true with
Large
> > companies, though you run into issues of momentum and territoriality
> there,
> > so getting new build environments in is not an easy thing to do.
> >
> > When I was working at a pretty good sized hosting company/Tier-1
ISP,
> one
> > of the complaints I fielded against cobbler was that it was Red Hat
> > specific, which at the time it very much was. In a company that
> deployed
> > RH/Solaris/Windows with fairly equal regularity on real hardware,
> there
> > would be no chance of replacing the in house build systems with
> cobbler.
> >
>
> Roger that.
>
> It's increasingly becoming /Linux/ specific, not Red Hat specific, and
> agnostic to anything running inside
> a fully virtualized VM (ISO based FV installs, virt clones, etc).
>
> In many cases we also see that the Windows side of the house is
managed
> from some other tool, regardless,
> so we don't need to be able to replace that. When we do, we have virt
> as
> our sword -- it allows supporting
> *anything*.
>
> > Virtualization certainly has its place, however currently there are
> many
> > pitfalls preventing its complete adoption (real-time systems in
> > particular). As I stated above, I expect this to change within 5
> years or
> > so, but for now this decision would take away the ability of admins
> to use
> > cobbler as the Swiss-army knife of build servers when deploying to
> bare
> > metal systems. I also believe that if you can establish a beach
head
> in
> > the data center for cobbler, you will open avenues for adoption by
> > demonstrating how easy it is to deploy virtually (no pun intended)
as
> many
> > OSes as are commonly used on many different platforms.
I agree, the Linux philosophy definitely favors the Swiss-army knife
approach. It may not be the easiest OS for joe-schmoe to pick up and
start using, it may not be the cleanest user experience for the novice
user, but it can do whatever you want it to do.
> >
> >
>
> I'd rather seek to do what we do the best that we can do it, rather
> than
> spreading
> ourselves too thin. For mixed Linux/other environments the answer
> should
> be virt.
OK, I know you didn't mean it this way, but you telling me what the
answer is before I've asked the question is starting to sound more like
M$ itself. I'm sure for your deployment Windows run virtually on top of
Linux works great. For my deployment, it's a complete non-starter.
Vendors that we buy software from are not going to support their
software if it's running in this manner. This is especially true for us
since most of our software must interoperate with hardware (via USB,
firewire, Ethernet, RS232, and proprietary PCI cards to name a few).
>
> > I'm obviously a bit biased, being the developer interested in
> supporting as
> > many non-linux os'es as possible, although I certainly understand
the
> RH
> > viewpoint and the stategery involved in the decision. I won't be
> heart
> > broken if we don't decide to support bare metal for most (if not
all)
> > non-linux os'es, but I do think it's a missed opportunity.
> >
> >
> *nod*
>
> As much as I'd like to, we can't hit all the opportunities.
>
> I want to see virtualized Windows (and other OS's) advance, the way we
> do this is to avoid putting Windows
> physical installations on life support, and asking folks to embrace
the
> virt tooling.
As I mentioned, my company would embrace this about as well as it's
embraced Vista (i.e. not at all).
>
> --Michael
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> cobbler mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
If you're totally against the RIS integration, what about beefing up the
documentation and interfacing for a secondary installation server to
install the non-Linux systems? Seems like there could be non-local
profiles that point to another system via tftp and grub.
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