On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 12:51 PM, DaZZa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > OK guru's. :-) > > I'm in a situation where I need to duplicate on a mass basis - to the > order or 3000-5000 units - a Linux setup off a headless box. > > All the destination boxes will be identical in specification, and the > same as the original. At this point (trial - only 15 to do), I've made > an image of the disk using DD to a USB attached drive - which works, > and gets the new boxes working, but takes 3+ hours to dump the image > back to the new boxes. > > 3+ hours over 5000 machines is not really acceptable. :-) > > Is there a better way to do this? Something which will make a smaller > image and dump back quicker - most of the disk is empty, there's only > about 15 gig of actual data/setup on a 160 gig drive - and still > maintain the partition setup/bootability like using DD does? > > Willing to listen to anyone who has a cluestick and is willing to apply it.
Building a provisioning infrastructure is the easy part. Managing a deployment of 3000+ machines is going to be a challenge. Are these set-and-forget machines, or are you going to have to change stuff on them in the future? Even if they are set and forget, I can imagine that your requirements *will* change in the future and you'll be up shit creek if you've done just plain imaging. My suggestion (speaking as someone who's done a 400+ seat deployment, twice): - use your distro's network boot + auto install system to install the most miminal of base images you can get. (kickstart, debian-preseed and PXE are your friend) - hook a configuration management system in an the end of the prep process and have it configure the machines (Puppet is perfect for this) Jeff hit the nail on the head when he explained why you need to use a configuration management system. If you don't have that infrastructure in place you're going to hate yourself when you have to change some seemingly trivial setting across 3000+ machines. You'll end up duplicating whatever work you do, because you'll need to check that the change works on existing machines *as well as* new machines that you provision. Put really simply: keep as much logic as you possibly can *out* of your provisioning process and rely on a configuration management system like Puppet. Lindsay -- http://slug.org.au/ (the Sydney Linux Users Group) http://holmwood.id.au/~lindsay/ (me) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
