On May 27, 2013, at 4:43 PM, Tom Metro <[email protected]> wrote:
> Federico Lucifredi wrote: >> You can think of MAAS as a PXE server on steroids. > > Makes sense. > > >> IPMI. > > I see. > > I wonder...adding an IPMI controller - which has to remain up and > running constantly - may end up using as much power as some of the low > power ARM boards that you'd be managing in my proposed scenario. > > Does MAAS only work with IPMI? I'm assuming if you power up a node by > some other means, it'll still respond to the net boot request. It also supports Wake on Lan > > But really all you need is an ability to power cycle a specific node. > Eventually someone will hack together a computer controlled power > supply...a bunch of USB jacks, each with its own individually > addressable transistor, all controlled by a Pi or Arduino with an > Ethernet shield. A used datacenter network-addressable power strip from e-bay would do as well. > >> - PXE support on ARM hobbist level boards is poor or non-existent... > > Hardware limitation or lack of firmware? ARM lacking support for basic standards, like hardware enumeration. Some are being remedied in firmware form, others are being resolved through U-boot extensions (PXE) as an interim solution. > >> - Ubuntu does not run on R.PI boards... > > But that only matters for the controlling node, right? MAAS can be used > to deploy other operating systems to the nodes, no? > > Do you need to be able to run Ubuntu on the node at least once to enroll > it in MAAS? (I see the setup menu for Ubuntu Server has an option to > join the machine to a MAAS network.) Exactly. A small image is passed down to retrieve hardware inventory, etc. > >> "Managing" to MAAS means controlling a pool of PXE-driven devices >> that were enlisted under its control, and provisioning what is >> installed on them. > > I didn't get what actually happened when a node was enrolled. I gather > there is some communication between the node's IPMI controller and the > master node to capture the target node's address? Maybe also capturing > the MAC of the node so it can be mapped to the desired OS boot image? > > >> Usually "deployment" or "provisioning" is used in >> this context, rather than managing. > > Sure, MAAS is just dealing with the power up/OS boot/power down aspects, > and not management of the node while it is running, like a cloud > management tool would. > > No doubt someone will (or has already) integrate MAAS into a cloud > management tool. In some cases it could be used to deploy hypervisors to > the bare metal. On other cases you might transparently manage services > across a mix of VMs and bare metal. > MAAS is already integrated with Juju, Ubuntu's service provisioning and scale-out system - and we integrated it with Landscape last year. But in terms of what it supports, it is Ubuntu-only — and Ubuntu server only at that, although changing that would be easy, if Desktops were provisioned over LAN more often. Best -F _________________________________________ -- "'Problem' is a bleak word for challenge" - Richard Fish (Federico L. Lucifredi) - flucifredi at acm.org - GnuPG 0x4A73884C _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
