Provisioning & management


When I first found Kickstart, I had great joy in customizing my install files. I now have a set of PHP scripts that will create a customized Kickstart file for any install based on parameters passed in the URL. Now, looking into management of VMs (in terms of software), I’ve found that there are actually a number of systems that help with the install, and extend all the way into management of the individual VMs.

Cobbler – fedorahosted.org/cobbler/

Works with koan to provision VMs and customise the install.

Func – fedorahosted.org/func/

Like puppet, but seems to be able to send individual commands to machines instead of depending on modules (and also has modules)

Puppet – www.puppetlabs.com/

Extensive modules. Might end up going with Func just because func looks simpler.

Foreman – theforeman.org/

WebUI for Puppet. I saw the demo version of this at a Linux User Group (Singapore) meeting in April, it’s improved a lot since then.

Spacewalk – spacewalk.redhat.com/

Redhat’s opensource version of Satellite, their own provisioning system.

At this point, Cobbler + Func seems to be the easiest for me to use, so I’m looking forward to trying them.

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