On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Michael DeHaan <mdehaan@redhat.com> wrote:
Robert Lazzurs wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 16:40, Rainer Duffner <rainer@ultra-secure.de> wrote:
>
>> Michael DeHaan schrieb:
>>
>>> We don't really have a vested interest in making Windows physical
>>> deployments easy to deploy.
>>>
>>>
>
> Hello,
>
> So just to add my 2c in...
>
> This statement worries me, I would suggest while we as a community
> should encourage the use of FOSS operating systems do we really want
> to take an RMS style view on this?  Cobbler from my POV should be a
> generic systems management and will work best if it can document and
> deploy your whole infrastructure, re my earlier comments about
> upgrading iLO cards and network devices from Cobbler.
>
> Windows is not going to be going away from the data centre any time
> soon and while I believe everything should be virtual unless there is
> a good reason not to be not everyone has that view.
>

Ok, I'll explain this further.

Cobbler is growing rather fast... VERY fast, and as it grows, I want to
make sure the quality of the application everywhere is the best it can be.

There are a lot of things left undone, and various rough corners that
still need to be polished. SUSE, Network Config, and Debian/Ubuntu support
are all very recent and in varying degrees of being finished. We're not
even packaged for all of them. There are still things that can't be done
in the web application, etc.
Lots of expansion, but we can do more to refine those things. (Does koan
work on all of these platforms yet for virt AND replacement? Etc).
If we expand too fast, we forget to go back and fill in that detail.

I seem to encounter a lot of users that /do/ clone physical windows
systems, so I am not sure doing scripted installs is the answer.
Further, the RIS stuff
does not seem to be consistent across all OSes . An approach based on
cloning those systems may be better in the end because that also allows
working systems to be deployed .. not just empty shells that just have
the Base OS on them.

I think we need to take a step back for a bit and focus on the core of
Cobbler, close out lots of bugs and RFEs, ensure our new distribution
support
is first-class on the level with our others, and make sure the web
application has parity with the command line.

Yes, all of these things /can/ be done in parallel, but as we add new
arms to our octopus, we must make sure we go back and add the proverbial
suckers
to those arms.

Perfectionism is /not/ a goal, but I do want to make sure we don't
spread out too fast and leave things unfinished.

Regarding the cloning of physical systems, a while back Andrew Brown
contributed a live image that would clone (a bit slowly) a physical
system using cobbler to network
deploy the clone image. I think it might be interesting to try to
resurrect and supercharge that idea. This way we could be sure to deploy
Windows systems
that /also/ had their software installed, without having to also teach
Cobbler about Windows domain automation. We say Clonezilla and other
analogs is hard to deploy,
why not write a better solution?

And, of course, where virtualization is possible, I think that /IS/ a
better route. We should encourage more use of that technology and also
enhance our
capabilities there where it makes sense.

--Michael

 
Michael-
 
What you layout is the best aproach, I work in many windows enviroments and RIS sucks, so we have always depend on imgaging to roll out new Windows desktops to servers. If the brialiant coders could figure out a way to have cobbler clone an existing system and redeploy it anyware, that would satisfy the Windows admins I know.