Hi Tory

We now use vrealize in vmware to automate the build of vm's. However behind the scenes it uses cobbler and creates a system in cobbler to build each vm, even though pxe is used to build the vm. Once the vm is built the system definition is removed from cobbler. The vm always has a static ip even though they are pxe built.

In my 25 years or so of being a sysadmin i have not come across anyone using dhcp for servers to get their ip (exception being cloud environments such as Azure where the infrastructure controls ip allocation). Thus it makes sense for servers to use static ip's even if the build uses pxe (dhcp/tftp). For example if the server cannot get its ip then its not available.

Just my tuppence worth. You dont need to follow my advice, but a wise man once said dont make the mistakes yourself but learn from others mistakes.

--
Alastair Munro

-----Original Message-----
From: Tory M Blue <tmblue@gmail.com>
To: cobbler mailing list <cobbler@lists.fedorahosted.org>
Sent: Thu, 05 May 2016 21:28
Subject: [cobbler] Re: Multiple subnets, multiple dhcp --dhcp-tag, profiles, distro

On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 3:26 AM,  <alastair@alastair-munro.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> i didnt say we use different profiles. we use the same profile across all
> subnets. we actually have 4 cobbler servers and all the slaves replicate
> from one master. our cobbler servers are in different data centers. each dc
> has one or more subnets we pxe boot on. you set the server override at the
> system item level and cobbler takes care of the rest. so if a host is on
> netA it must have server override IP x.
>
> btw, are you using an old version of cobbler? best to get up to date if u
> can. appreciate this can be tricky if your cobbler is integrated into a
> product like satelite or katello.
>
> regarding profiles: we only have one per major release of the os. eg el5,
> el6, el7, ub1404. so thats 4 profiles that are used across rhel, centos,
> oracle linux and ubuntu 1404, plus all the point releases, and loads of
> different configs. furthermore we dont differentiate between vms and real
> servers. one profile works across them all. also you can use the meta ks
> variables to pass your requirements to the builds. so we have build=vm,
> build=bda, build=hadoop, build=sas94vm. these then setup different disk
> layouts. we also implemented the ability to turn off or on functionality
> using enable= or disable=. eg enable=proxy,nimsoft,uek disable=swap, vas4.
> these are not cobbler builtins, its just coding the templating engine.
> cobbler used the cheetah templating engine which allows you embed bits of
> python code.
>
> its much better to have a simple build system and then have a cfg mgmt tool
> like puppet do all the post build config.
>

I missed this one, thanks again Alastair.

I'm using the latest and greatest cobbler, I rebuilt the system so
it's all new shiny.
Okay single profile, thanks. But you are using server setups, which
can take the various switches. If I'm purely using a single Profile,
no systems configured, I think I'm still in a situation where things
are not working as "I think,  I should be able to get them tooooo"

Ya I've started looking inside the KS and using some of the  cheetah
stuff but failing miserable. I figured i could do  something like

#if $next_server == "10.13.200"
   #set $server="10.13.200.101"
#else  set $server = "10.13.5.100"
#end if

For example, using the right cheetah # syntax,  Figure this would be
way to achieve what I want. I should be able to overwrite dynamically
what the next_server or in fact what $server is.

Thanks again, still looking.

Tory
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