Ken - Feel free to contact me offline for help with kickstart .. I'm not currently working with it, but have in the past fairly successfully..
Scott On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Hall, Ken (GTS) <ken_h...@ml.com> wrote: > Okay, I gave up and ran timings. > > Our base system consists of 7 minidisks, for a total of 22,744 > cylinders. About half of that (three volumes) is empty space in an LV > for a product that generates data after the system is up. The actual > base system is three minidisks, plus one swap disk, that roughly fits on > a 3390-9. It all has to be either formatted or copied. > > Kickstart took 21 minutes to format all that, plus an additional 5 > minutes (surprisingly) to install 491 packages, for a total of 26 > minutes. The process failed in the end because of a bug in my > post-install script, but the system was manually bootable. > > Our clone process took 16 minutes to sequentially copy the same 7 disks > via DDR. If you're clever, you can set up parallel service machines to > perform the copies at once and get it down to maybe 5 minutes total > (assuming your system isn't all on one disk). We had done this in a > previous incarnation of the Linux project, but our current method is > sequential. > > As I said, the difference is significant in itself, but we're talking > minutes. Different combinations of disks with different numbers of > packages, and amounts of empty space will affect the results, so Your > Mileage May DEFINITELY Vary. > > My main gripe with kickstart is that it's complicated, buggy (on z), and > badly documented (on z). I spent a lot of time fooling with it during > our original setup (gave up), once again later (when I was finally able > to get it to work), and because we may have to switch to using it, I'm > still trying to get it working properly in my "spare" time. > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:linux-...@vm.marist.edu] On Behalf Of > William D Carroll > Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 11:04 AM > To: LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU > Subject: Re: [LINUX-390] To kick or to clone ... that is the question > > 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. 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