Oneiric server, Deploy Server fleets p2

Welcome to the second installment of this article series. In the first part of this article we installed an Ubuntu server instance, made sure it became an orchestra installation server. If this is new to you, Orchestra is a new Oneiric server feature that enables admins to very easily deploy fleets of Ubuntu servers. Let's pick up where the first article stopped

First, let's check where we are. You see installing the orchestra server, it automatically downloads and imports various Ubuntu server ISOs and creates all the needed structure (distros, profiles ...etc) in the underlying cobbler system. Let's see what have we

$ sudo cobbler list
distros:
   hardy-i386
   hardy-x86_64  
   lucid-i386
   lucid-x86_64  
   maverick-i386 
   maverick-x86_64
   natty-i386
   natty-x86_64  
   oneiric-i386  
   oneiric-x86_64

profiles:
   hardy-i386
   hardy-i386-juju
   hardy-x86_64
   hardy-x86_64-juju
   lucid-i386
   lucid-i386-juju
   lucid-x86_64
   lucid-x86_64-juju
   maverick-i386
   maverick-i386-juju
   maverick-x86_64
   maverick-x86_64-juju
   natty-i386
   natty-i386-juju
   natty-x86_64
   natty-x86_64-juju
   oneiric-i386
   oneiric-i386-juju
   oneiric-x86_64
   oneiric-x86_64-juju

systems:

repos:
   hardy-i386
   hardy-i386-security
   hardy-x86_64
   hardy-x86_64-security
   lucid-i386
   lucid-i386-security
   lucid-x86_64
   lucid-x86_64-security
   maverick-i386
   maverick-i386-security
   maverick-x86_64
   maverick-x86_64-security
   natty-i386
   natty-i386-security
   natty-x86_64
   natty-x86_64-security
   oneiric-i386
   oneiric-i386-security
   oneiric-x86_64
   oneiric-x86_64-security

images:

mgmtclasses:
   orchestra-juju-acquired
   orchestra-juju-available

woah! that sure makes my life easier. If you're interested to see where the isos were downloaded (like I was) here you are

ls /var/lib/cobbler/isos/
hardy-i386-mini.iso    lucid-i386-mini.iso    maverick-i386-mini.iso    natty-i386-mini.iso    oneiric-i386-mini.iso
hardy-x86_64-mini.iso  lucid-x86_64-mini.iso  maverick-x86_64-mini.iso  natty-x86_64-mini.iso  oneiric-x86_64-mini.iso

Let's create a new virtual box VM, to serve as our new "server" that needs to be installed. Here's how it looks for me


One thing is worth noting however, it's that the NIC is placed on the "intnet" network, which has the IP range 192.168.77.0/24 that we configured in the first part of this article


now the only "real" thing you have to do, is to add a profile on the orchestra server for your new bare server. The profile binds its mac address, to a name and an installation profile (think OS to install, kickstart ..etc)

sudo cobbler system add --name="oneiric01.ubuntu.lan" --mac-address="08:00:27:B7:76:2A" --ip-address="192.168.77.33" --dns-name="oneiric01.ubuntu.lan" --hostname="oneiric01.ubuntu.lan" --profile="oneiric-x86_64-juju" --mgmt-classes="orchestra-juju-available" --kopts=" DEBCONF_DEBUG=developer netcfg/dhcp_timeout=120 netcfg/choose_interface=eth0"

Boot the server, choose PXE (For vbox that's F12 then "l" that's an L)



Watch the installer fly by (look ma hands free)



and your box is ready!


That's how easy it is to install a fresh server off your orchestra box! So basically the only thing you need to do per server, is to attach it to a profile and that's it. Boot it and it installs whatever you provisioned for it. Of course any good admin already did that manually before, but it took effort and it wasn't standardized. Now you can count on Ubuntu server covering your back when you're tasked with installing a hundred servers

How cool was that! Got thoughts, comments or rotten tomatoes ? Shoot me a comment

Oneiric server, Deploy Server fleets p1

I'm gonna be posting a series of articles on new features and cool technology bits that are landing in Ubuntu Oneiric (11.10) server. Why? I like servers, I like cloud, I like Ubuntu, it all mixes well, what's not to like :)

During this first article, I'll be demoing (in a graphically intensive way :) what it takes (hint: not much!) to deploy a server fleet with Oneiric server. Orchestra is the name of a wonderful piece of technology that lands in Oneiric, that's been created on top of the open-source cobbler project. Orchestra is super easy to install and get started with, and enables you to very rapidly deploy tens or hundreds of physical servers. I'll be using virtualbox to build a small test "lab" on my laptop for purposes of this article. I did actually try KVM first, but faced some trouble getting PXE booting reliably, so I opted for virtualbox which worked flawlessly (kudos vbox guys, you rock!)

Let's get started, I created a VM to represent the very first "head node", that will install the rest of all nodes. Here is a summary of its configuration

Pop in the virtual CD, boot it, press F6, add "priority=critical locale=en_US url=http://bit.ly/uquick" (Thanks Dustin!) so it looks like

The uquick profile answers all the installer questions, such that the installation is fully automatic. Since the VM contains two NICs however, we'll need to select a primary one (eth0 in my case)

The installation runs like a champ, fully automated, give it a few minutes till it finishes everything and reboots into the server OS (oh that was easy!)

Now I configure eth1 to have a static IP address of 192.168.77.1/24 (I made any address up), here is a snapshot of /etc/network/interfaces and I started eth1 using ifup

At this stage, I rebooted the server but you definitely don't have to. Let's start actually installing Orchestra

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-orchestra-server -y

Everything proceeds automatically, for any question you get during package installation, I'll provide a picture with the answer :)







That's it! You've just installed and configured your first Ubuntu Orchestra server, and you're now ready to install a fleet of Ubuntu servers the easy way! In part 2 of this article, I'll go through creating a second server, PXE booting and installing it from the orchestra server. (Extra credit: If you can't wait, try PXE booting a fresh server right now. Note that after installation, orchestra actually downloads and auto-imports a few Ubuntu mini ISOs, thus will need a few minutes depending on your internet connection speed)

So, what do you think of this coolness? Is this easier than the last time you tried building yourself an automated network installer? Shoot me a comment, let me know what you think