[CentOS-virt] Preferred method of provisioning VM images

[Ed Heron]

  If networking is already configured when a VM boots, how about a
kernel parameter for a configuration server?  If it is configured to
grab an executable file, it would be very flexible.

  We use kickstart files to build our CentOS VM's and physical boxes and
then pull configuration changes from  a server at regular intervals.
I'm working on extending our existing internal intranetto keep history
and to allow a single change to propagate to all relevant servers.  Also
would allow fail2ban to share it's banned IP's.  Since this is specific
to our internal systems, it can't easily be exported, but most of it is
pretty straight forward.  It could almost be integrated into an existing
CMS.  Think WebMin but in a LISA (Large Installation System
Administration) environment.

  A similar technique could be used for cloud machines.