I noticed in the AI Client Redesign Meeting Notes[1]: Then there was a discussion about Derived Profiles. The outcome was to gather requirements around the following:
| - What does deriving mean? That is, what aspects of the profile may | be derived? What problems are we trying to solve here? | - Who derives a profile? Some clients or all the clients? | - Should the client support substitution of certain fields in the | AI manifest? If yes, what problem will that solve? | - How does the impact the criteria selection on the AI server? Currently I use derived profiles to do the following: - Customize partitioning based upon server model, disk size, memory size, etc. - Select the appropriate flash archive based on server model (primarily sun4u vs. sun4v vs i86pc) I have a lot of logic in finish scripts (JASS) and third-party system management tools that does various other things based upon location (derived from IP address), OS revision, and other criteria that is very hard or impossible to acquire automatically. Arguably, the bulk of JASS is legacy baggage with secure by default. As I look forward, I would like to derive profiles that: - Lays out storage properly. The definition of "properly" will be likely be dependent on criteria that doesn't work for everyone. That is, at MyCo we may boot from local disk and want two compressed mirrors. At YourCo "properly" means to use the lowest numbered LUN presented via iSCSI from storage array X. - Select software to install based on somewhat arbitrary rules. That is, at site X I need the omniback package and site Y I need netbackup. If it's the primary ldom of a sun4v box, install LDoms Manager 2.4. - Select repository (or mirror) based on location such that I don't install across the Atlantic if I have a closer copy. - Select repository based on location (lab installs experimental bits) - Require production servers to have packages signed by the OS vendor or by internal QA. That is, make it impossible to install experimental third-party software on production. 1. http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/caiman/auto_install/AI_mtg/Minutes/ai.client.meeting.txt -- Mike Gerdts http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/
