Multi-system administration with Func

Posted Jun 19, 2008 2:26 UTC (Thu) by Burgundavia (guest, #25172)
Parent article: Multi-system administration with Func

The single problem with func and the rest of the ET stuff is that they are not the easiest to
figure out how the hell to make them useful.

Multi-system administration with Func

Posted Jun 20, 2008 10:11 UTC (Fri) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link] (1 responses)

Cobbler, for a quick glance, sounds like a souped-up version of the Solaris 10 Jumpstart
feature, which can make rolling out new installations somewhat easier.
This comment doesn't really add much, but I'm hoping there is someone with more Cobbler
experience who knows Jumpstart that can pontificate.

Multi-system administration with Func

Posted Jun 26, 2008 8:08 UTC (Thu) by joib (subscriber, #8541) [Link]

I have no experience of jumpstart, but I believe it's something more like redhat kickstart,
no? I.e. a system for automated installs with a file containing answers to all the questions
that are usually asked when going through the interactive installer.

cobbler is more like a system for managing kickstarts and pxe boot infrastructure. It has 3
basic types of objects; distros (pxe boot images), profiles (associates a distro with a
specific kickstart file) and finally systems (associates a profile with a MAC and IP address).

So you create a bunch of systems with cobbler, and cobbler can generate a dhcp config (based
on a template you can modify e.g. to include non-cobblerized entries), sets up a tftp server
etc. Then you just PXE boot the systems and they are automatically installed with the profiles
you have specified.

Multi-system administration with Func

Posted Jun 22, 2008 13:50 UTC (Sun) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link] (2 responses)

they are not the easiest to figure out how the hell to make them useful

You actually have a specific complaint, or are you just spreading FUD? These tools are currently used by large partner companies of Red Hat, who obviously find them useful otherwise they wouldn't continue to use them.

Rich.

Multi-system administration with Func

Posted Jun 27, 2008 4:27 UTC (Fri) by Burgundavia (guest, #25172) [Link] (1 responses)

No, this is not FUD. I really love all the ET stuff Red Hat is working on, but when I put on
my "busy sysadmin" hat, I realized I got really lost trying to figure out a) where to start b)
was the pain of setup worth the reward.

Multi-system administration with Func

Posted Jun 27, 2008 7:34 UTC (Fri) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link]

I'd really like to find out what issues you were having. (Email me, r j o n e s (at) r e d h a t dot c o m)

I'm working on a set of command line tools for administrators of small-scale virtual machine deployments, so you can type commands such as virt-df to get a 'df'-style listing of the disks of all your virtual machines, or virt-ps to get process listings from all of them.

You could also start with the list of links at the bottom of this page: http://virt-manager.org/. However it's not intended that you should need to compile everything from source, unless you want to join in with development. Everything either is or will be in Fedora, and the good bits should eventually make it into RHEL.

Rich.

Multi-system administration with Func

Posted Jun 22, 2008 14:28 UTC (Sun) by ernest (guest, #2355) [Link]

Actually one easy example is doing an update of some package on all your systems, but only
where that service is a version with a known security risk. 

I can easily think of many tasks which I had to do fairly recently where a package like func
would have helped me. I can imagine though that if you don't have at least a few systems to
manage that setting up something like func is more a bother than a helper.

Ernest.