Michael DeHaan wrote:
I use cobbler to provision xen guests and perceus
(http://www.perceus.org) to provision stateless images on nodes of
hpc clusters, which are probably different from thin clients only in
the use they are given :). From where I stand, it would be great if
cobbler could manage something similar (I guess that's why I'm on
both these lists :) )
What does Perceus do that Cobbler does not in your usage?
well, in a nutshell, at least the way I use them (I might me missing
some feature)
cobbler: I create profiles, which are essentially managed kickstarts,
and assign them to systems. When this system boots from pxe (or is
created by koan --virt), it gets installed according to that profile. I
usually use cobbler only once per system.
perceus: I create "capsules", which are stateless system images, and
assign them to nodes. When the nodes boot from pxe, the capsule is
transferred to the node, where it runs from ram (so the node can be
diskless). Perceus is used every time the nodes boot.
With systems provisioned with cobbler, the result is a bunch of
independent systems, which without other configuration management tools
will each follow their own way, at least until they are reinstalled. For
xen guests, this is precisely what I need, since each system is used for
different purposes.
With nodes provisioned with perceus, the configuration is controlled by
the capsule which resides on the server. I just change the capsule on
the server and push the changes to the nodes, or reboot the nodes for
more drastic changes. The bottom line is that I only manage two systems,
the server and the capsule, which just happens to run on a large number
of nodes. For a hpc cluster, this is precisely what I need, since each
node is used only to compute and send results home.
Perceus doesn't have a web interface though :)
miguel
--Michael
--
Miguel Costa
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