nico/www.nico.schottelius.org
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Wiki Activity

bootstrap configuration and installation server

Browse source 
Signed-off-by: Nico Schottelius <nico@kr.ethz.ch>
This commit is contained in:
Nico Schottelius 2011-04-29 22:37:04 +02:00
parent 82e3086e65
commit c99d8fcb21
1 changed files with 73 additions and 0 deletions
Show stats Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

73
blog/configuration-installation-server-bootstrap.mdwn Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
[[!meta title="Bootstrapping configuration and installation servers"]]
## Introduction
Imagine you can start from beginning in a new environment. There
are no automatic frameworks to install and configure systems
in place.
## Installation versus Configuration
We need a system to install machines and one to configure machines.
Although there are systems out there which try to do both at the
same time, the experience is having two specialised tools for this job
is the better choice: Each tool can focus on its own task best.
Some tools even enforce a reinstallation, if something needs to be
reconfigured, which is a good example why having two tools is the
better choice.
Seperating the installation from the configuration also allows you
to have the newly setup system minimally configured and adjust it
on demand, wheras having both in the same step would require
to define the use at installation time.
## Where to start?
Now the question is, which tool do we install first? The automatic
installation or configuration?
From a logical way on how a system is built, the installation
method should be preferred, because only an installed system can
be configured. But as you can see shortly, this is a bad choice,
as it results in the following steps:
* Manual installation of a system
* Manual installation of installation tool
* Manual configuration of installation tool
* Automatic installation of a new system for the configuration tool (optional)
* Manual installation of configuration tool
* Manual configuration of the configuration tool
* Automatic configuration of installation and configuration tool possible
If we change the order, we'll benefit from an automatic infrastructure
earlier:
* Manual installation of a system
* Manual installation of a configuration tool
* Manual configuration of the configuration tool
* Automatic installation of an installation tool
* Automatic configuration of an installation tool
* Automatic installation of a new system for the configuration or installation tool (optional)
## Ok, but what to do with these information?
As you might have watched my recent activites,
I've written a new
[[configuration management tool named cdist|software/cdist]],
started a project to install
[[unix installers named cuni|software/cuni]] and try to
bring together the [[unix community in the u2u project|net/u2u]].
The idea described above is the result of an old discussion, but
not having an installation framework at home a current problem.
## The plan
As **cdist** is ready to be used in production mode, I plan to write
some **cdist** types to setup installation servers soon.
Watch this blog for updates, if you want to install a installation
server via configuration management or begin to bootstrap a UNIX
infrastructure.
[[!tag eth sysadmin unix]]