[cobbler] Kickstaring across a site-to-site link

Caleb Moniot calebm at elementaltechnologies.com
Fri Aug 15 17:08:10 UTC 2014


Thank you both for your prompt replies! This give me some good avenues to
explore. I've contacted IT about possible network configuration changes to
see what the options are. I'll also be setting up a slave cobbler server in
a VM here then migrate it to the remote site once configuration is
complete. Alastair, that doc will come in very handy. I'll see about
putting it into production.

Again, thank you for your assistance.

-Caleb


On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 6:21 AM, Greg Chavez <greg.chavez at gmail.com> wrote:

> I echo Alastair's comments. I've been using a slave cobbler server to
> handle kicks at two data centers for four years now. Works
> quite excellently.
>
> --Greg
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 5:28 AM, <alastair at alastair-munro.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> You are probably best creating a local cobbler slave server. This will
>> also save doing installs across your wan link. I wrote this recently that
>> might help: https://github.com/cobbler/cobbler/wiki/Speeding%20up%
>> 20triggers%20to%20sync%20remote%20cobbler%20servers
>>
>> Or a vlan that traverses data centers? Install on vlan and the swap
>> IPs/vlan after build?
>>
>> Alastair
>>
>>
>> On 2014-08-15 01:53, Caleb Moniot wrote:
>>
>>> Cobblers,
>>>
>>> I'm sure I'm not the only one in this situation so I'm hoping some
>>> others in the cobbler community can lend me the benefit of their
>>> experience in this scenario.
>>>
>>> I'm in a environment where I don't have control over the DHCP
>>> configuration. To get around this I setup cobbler and used dnsmasq's
>>> proxy-dhcp feature. This has been working great but now we've grown
>>> beyond our current server room and have added a new building with a
>>> site-to-site link. The servers I need to kickstart to are across this
>>> link. Everything's routed so I can access the systems (physical, VM
>>> hosts, etc) normally when they have and OS. The problem is that my
>>> cobbler server now can't hear their DHCP requests so they don't pxe
>>> boot.
>>>
>>> For the time being I'm using the buildiso feature of cobbler to create
>>> an ISO that contains all the system entries for the servers across the
>>> link and using that to boot them for kickstarting. This gets them
>>> kickstarted but we're in a testing environment so this process will be
>>> done frequently (sometimes multiple times per day).  Manually
>>> booting, selecting the correct system entry, then detaching the ISO
>>> once complete will quickly become cumbersome when kickstarting lots of
>>> systems.
>>>
>>> So far what's I've considered is:
>>>
>>>         * Direct connect from cobbler server to remote site.
>>>         * Mirrored cobbler server at remote site.
>>>
>>>
>>> Are there any other features of cobbler that I could leverage to solve
>>> this problem or does anyone else have recommendations from their
>>> experience in a similar situation?
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>>
>>> Caleb Moniot
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> cobbler mailing list
>>> cobbler at lists.fedorahosted.org
>>> https://lists.fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler
>>>
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>
>
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