On 5/10/2010 12:37 PM, Ross Walker wrote:
>
>> I think it is unfortunate how difficult it is to back up a working linux
>> machine and restore it onto different hardware, given that the system
>> really is very hardware independent. But, detecting the hardware and
>> mapping it to device drivers seems to be a black art hidden inside of
>> anaconda and then the local hardware related settings are fairly
>> hopelessly intertwined with application and user preferences in your
>> backup copies. I always thought that this would be a common enough
>> problem that some distribution would address it, but so far it hasn't
>> happened.
>
> That's why God invented the systems administrator!
Well, yeah - I suppose you could say the design is good for the job
security of sysadmins and for requiring support subscriptions from the
distribution vendors, but it's something that the computer really should
be able to handle by itself just like it does during the initial install.
> Here I use kickstart scripts for baseline server types that perform
> all the basic configurations on install.
Have you totaled up the hours you've spend on these tasks that would be
unnecessary in a better-designed system? And even if that sort-of makes
sense for servers that have a basic "type", what about ones that have
application developers as users and end up accumulating all kinds of
cruft that you don't know about?
> If I am setting up an ESXi infrastructure the first thing I would do
> is setup a Cobbler server and a Windows deployment server (maybe a
> Solaris Jump Start server) and integrate it with the VMware vCenter
> templates. Then it's all point-n-click server deployment from there.
Don't forget that you can use ESXi for free, but not vCenter. But,
there's really no problem in just copying/cloning VMware images around -
you don't have to go through any extra contortions to be able to
reproduce them (with variations for every OS), you just need to save a
baseline copy before adding specialized applications.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com