Michael DeHaan wrote:
Miguel Costa wrote:
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.
In this case, the capsule seems very analogous to a config management
profile that Stateless Project was attempting, right? I'm probably
missing some of the finer points. If I am, can you explain further?
FWIW I recently shot out an email to Cobbler-list about having cobbler
dynamically generate the external_nodes information for Puppet, so it
will make it easier to link cobbler profiles with puppet profiles.
Look for that in a future release. If that's unrelated that's ok :)
From the little I saw of puppet, yes, I think it achieves the same
effect (stateless), and probably in a more effective manner, but I guess
the best way to see the difference is to look at the diskless case. You
can't manage diskless nodes (or thin clients, etc.) with cobbler +
puppet, can you?
This is just to illustrate what I think is different in the two
approaches - in practice, nodes/thin clients/etc. usually have some kind
of non-volatile memory, so if cobbler + puppet achieve the same effect
with less network usage and faster boot times, all the better
miguel
P.S. capsules also allow us to boot different versions or distributions
at will, without reinstallation - something like a repository of livecd
images that boot from the network. This doesn't sound very useful, but
one can think of situations where machines are used for different
purposes at different times, e.g. as desktops during the day and compute
nodes during the night, where this kind of separation might have some
advantages
Perceus doesn't have a web interface though :)
miguel
--Michael
--
Miguel Costa
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neoscopio, S.A.
Telefone: (+351) 220 301 500
Telemóvel: (+351) 93 317 11 62
Fax: (+351) 220 301 511
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Parque Tecnológico da UP
Rua Actor Ferreira da Silva, 100
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--
Miguel Costa
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Neoscopio, S.A.
Telefone: (+351) 220 301 500
Telemóvel: (+351) 93 317 11 62
Fax: (+351) 220 301 511
*_E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Parque Tecnológico da UP
Rua Actor Ferreira da Silva, 100
4200-298 Porto
*www.neoscopio.com* <http://www.neoscopio.com>
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