On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 03:21:09PM +0100, Loris Bennett wrote:

> Hi Benjamin,
> 
> Benjamin Lefoul <[log in to unmask]> writes:
> 
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I am actually interested in the automated install topic (currently
> > taking place in the other discussion, but I don't want to feed the
> > troll so I'll start a new one).
> >
> > Someone just mentioned Cobbler, and the fact that it's RH's baby. Is
> > this in any way linked to the recent acquisition of Ansible ?  In
> > fact, I never really understood what Ansible was, and does it have its
> > place in automated install? Can it replace Kickstart?
> >
> > As you can see I am pretty naive about the topic...
> 
> I don't know very much about kickstart but am currently using ansible to
> set up two administration servers for a test cluster.  My meagre
> understanding is that kickstart is mainly aimed at the initial
> lower-level installation (partitioning the disk, installing the base OS
> and other packages, ...).
> 
> Ansible on the other hand requires the machines you are managing to be
> already up and running and, normally, accessible via ssh.  Thus it seems
> it is a more fancy way of doing what kickstart can probably do in the
> post-install section.  However, Ansible works with 'playbooks', which are
> sets of 'plays', which in turn are sets of tasks to be carried out on a
> set of hosts.  You can run entire playbooks or just groups of tasks and
> you can also define roles, such as 'ldapserver' or 'dbserver' to bundle
> associated tasks together.  In general it seems slightly more orientated
> towards automated day-to-day management of multiple, heterogeneous hosts.
> 
> That having been said, I am no expert.

Nor I, but just a small note on our setup.

We use PXE+kickstart for a very minimal initial install.

Then, using a provisioning / configuration management tool we configure the
machine with the desired config, including things like:

- software repos and package installation
- configuration files
- user authentication (local users and/or LDAP etc)
- host and user keys
- network settings

We are currently using SaltStack mostly, and have used Ansible and Puppet in
the past. Other similar solutions include Chef and CFEngine, but I don't have
direct experience with them.

They each have pros and cons, depending on your exact local needs, or language
of preference etc.

There is of course the problem of how to initially connect to the
freshly-kickstarted machine, and there are multiple solutions for that depending
on which provisioning tool you're using.

Kind regards,
Paddy

-- 
Paddy Doyle
Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing,
Lloyd Building, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Phone: +353-1-896-3725
http://www.tchpc.tcd.ie/