The only thing that comes to mind doesn't seem to fit your bill. Red hat/fedora has a tool called kickstart. It allows for scripted installs of machines. You could easily create separate scripts for separate machine roles, and add each new machine to dhcp in the corresponding role group.
I did some googling just now, and I found a tool called FAI - Fully Automatic Installation http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/ It is designed for debian and claims to be more flexible than kickstart for redhat. I am curious about this too. If you use it, let me know how it goes. Jeff Anderson Mike Lovell wrote: > I have a question about software for managing LOTS of machines in a > datacenter. Here's what my situation is. Currently, I manage 2 > datacenters that contain a total of about 400 machines. Plus we are > growing at about 25 machines a month and have a few more datacenters > on the roadmap. The operating system is Debian Etch. What I am > wanting to do is have a tool that will somewhat automate the process > of installing and configuring the software on new machines. I would > really like a utility that I can define roles and assign machines to > different roles. Also, a hook into dhcp would nice since all of the > ip addressing is managed by dhcp and all of the OS installs are done > through dhcp and PXE. Do any of you know of any utility out there > that does anything like this? I would prefer something that is open > source but I can go with a commercial solution. Any thoughts on this? > > Thanks in advance > Mike Lovell > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ > /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
