Jan Damborsky wrote:
> Dave Miner wrote:
>> Jan Damborsky wrote:
>>> Dave Miner wrote:
>>>> Frank Ludolph wrote:
>>>>> Dave Miner wrote:
>>>>>> Susan Sohn wrote:
>>>>>>> The notes from today's meeting are at:
>>>>>>> http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/caiman/auto_install/ai_client_redesign_mtg_0520.txt
>>>>>>>  
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The concern I have is that the focus here seems to be too much on 
>>>>>> the single-disk case, whereas the target systems for AI are highly 
>>>>>> likely to be servers of some sort that will mostly have multiple 
>>>>>> disks.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Given that, do you feel that the proposed design is really the 
>>>>>> right one?
>>>>>>
>>>>> The discussion of the "single disk" case is actually what happens 
>>>>> after a disk is selected. Given a system with multiple disks, one 
>>>>> is (tentatively) selected and then the "single disk" considerations 
>>>>> are applied.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I expect that there are requirements to do partitioning, slicing, 
>>>> pool creation, etc., on more than one disk target.  Between that and 
>>>> the unresolved issues in the notes about selecting a disk when there 
>>>> is more than one, I'm concerned that it isn't quite covering the 
>>>> right set.
>>>
>>> I agree multiple disk configuration should be on the table.
>>> Given the complexity it might be introduced, I think we would
>>> need to come with list of use cases to be supported.
>>>
>>> In general, I assume that multiple disk configuration will be
>>> used to create the single ZFS root pool which will be used
>>> as target for the installation - might it be this assumption
>>> correct or might it be other purposes for specifying and
>>> configuring more than one disk ?
>>>
>>
>> If you consider AI as being used for more than just installing the OS, 
>> then yes, I think there are other use cases which involve configuring 
>> additional pools for applications or data to use.
>>
>> The issue I sense is that we may be applying the slim install 
>> sensibility, in which our focus is to get the OS installed and then 
>> get out of the way, when the desired capabilities in automated 
>> installation are much more in the realm of having a system 
>> fully-configured and operational at the conclusion of the automated 
>> installation process.
> 
> I see - I think we have been assuming so far that AI manifest
> will focus only on customization of disks which are used for OS install
> and Target Instantiation to prepare those disks.
> 

That's kind of what I had inferred from the proposals ;-)

> Then the question would be what mechanism would be provided to user to
> customize the rest of disks - it seems we implicitly assumed it would
> be done as part of post installation customization.
> 
> If we decide to specify all that configuration in AI manifest, I think
> that we probably would like to provide the same set of customization as
> for target disk:
> * partition configuration
> * slice configuration
> * creating ZFS data pools - mirrored configurations ?
> 

raidz's as well.  And probably file systems to create in a pool, which 
is something that's currently hard-coded for the root pool.

> Since AI manifest is static and thus might not be flexible enough
> to fulfill user requirements, we might need involve Derived Profiles
> project here, so that it is possible to generate disk configuration
> dynamically based on the target system configuration.
> 

Yes, I think there's significant need there.

Dave

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