I cannot agree with your statement "Any way you cut it, there's still more overhead in kickstart, and it still takes longer" as I've stated unless you're using flashcopy (not available to everyone) a DDR can take longer than a Kickstart, Real experience here with kickstarting being faster than DDR's kickstarting can be real simple as well. php to create the kickstart pull IP and info from a DB/flatfile. server kickstarted and up in <5min (if no dasdfmt needed)
I'm curious, how many have actually tried kickstarting servers and really dived into it? not just a sample kickstart and then didn't' like it. really looked at it? William 'Doug' Carroll Mainframe Systems Eng Sr I Global Technology Infrastructure RedHat Certified Engineer: 805008304430937 -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:linux-...@vm.marist.edu] On Behalf Of Hall, Ken (GTS) Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 10:31 AM To: LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: To kick or to clone ... that is the question Well, actually, all our guests use hipersockets, for reasons I won't get into, but we also use vswitch, and ping times going between two guests on a vswitch are comparable to guests on the hipersocket. Any way you cut it, there's still more overhead in kickstart, and it still takes longer. Even cutting out the formatting time, you still have to read the packages, send them over the network, and install them, but in the end you're talking minutes. There are other advantages to kickstart, I just wish it worked better and was better documented for zSeries. I had a terrible time figuring out how to get it working the first time, and a few of the parameters don't seem to work as advertised (or at least didn't with RHEL5.2). If you could put the kickstart file on the 191 disk, IPL the kernel, have it install headless, and reboot properly afterward, it would be worthwhile, but I could never get it to do that, and the kickstart file has to be on a server somewhere. At the moment, we control everything from VM, and creating instances is as simple as it can get. -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:linux-...@vm.marist.edu] On Behalf Of Mark Pace Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 10:12 AM To: LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Re: [LINUX-390] To kick or to clone ... that is the question Unless your installation source is on a Hipersocket connection, then the network time is near zilch. On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 10:02 AM, Hall, Ken (GTS) <ken_h...@ml.com> wrote: > The small addition of the read time for DDR is nothing compared to the > time required to install the packages over the network. That's at least > the same amount of reading, plus network time. > > I agree about the problem of keeping multiple masters. We keep just one > per version, and use a first-boot process to install additional packages > via yum as needed, or let the admins install what they need manually. > > It's still faster, by quite a lot. Unfortunately, I don't have time > today to run measurements, but our base system clone process takes less > than 30 minutes from beginning to end. > > All this said, we have been seriously considering going to a kickstart > based method, but my experience with it has not been encouraging. Aside > from taking longer, it seems to be fairly fragile and requires more > manual effort. Our clone method consists of running a VM-based dialog, > waiting for the copies to finish (run asynchronously in a service > machine), and then autologging the new guest. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:linux-...@vm.marist.edu] On Behalf Of > Rob van der Heij > Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 9:16 AM > To: LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU > Subject: Re: [LINUX-390] To kick or to clone ... that is the question > > On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Hall, Ken (GTS)<ken_h...@ml.com> wrote: > > > How could it be faster? > > > > Cloning involves simply copying the disks, that's one pass with DDR. > > Copying a disk requires reading and writing. Formatting just requires > (short) writes. Depending on your configuration, you may not notice > the extra resource usage in the elapsed time. > > But it's probably more whether you spend the time while you're waiting > for it. Once you get into the business of holding several different > golden masters to copy from, things get more complicated. > > Back then we used a very bare minimum that was copied to the new root > disk, and the required additional packages were added on top of it. > That approach allows for a stock supply of copied root disks ready to > use. > > -Rob > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or > visit > http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- > This message w/attachments (message) may be privileged, confidential or > proprietary, and if you are not an intended recipient, please notify the > sender, do not use or share it and delete it. Unless specifically indicated, > this message is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of any investment > products or other financial product or service, an official confirmation of > any transaction, or an official statement of Merrill Lynch. Subject to > applicable law, Merrill Lynch may monitor, review and retain > e-communications (EC) traveling through its networks/systems. The laws of > the country of each sender/recipient may impact the handling of EC, and EC > may be archived, supervised and produced in countries other than the country > in which you are located. This message cannot be guaranteed to be secure or > error-free. References to "Merrill Lynch" are references to any company in > the Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. group of companies, which are wholly-owned by > Bank of America Corporation. 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