Today I set up pxe reinstalls at our co-lo provider. This was a straight-forward process based on the blog post http://technomojo-hmb.blogspot.com/2008/03/installing-linux-over-network.html.
The only bit o' honey that I would like to add to the information that is pretty clearly laid out in that post is that when handling this over KVM-over-IP, you must be aware that the visual indicators will not be available. This can and should be handled by using pre and/or post execution scripts within the kickstart configuration. At minimum, you should ensure that the post execution script reboots the machine.
I do not have extensive experience with Kickstart, but it does seem worthwhile to suggest doing some testing of your own with respect to the pre and post execution scripts. Moving forward I would like to attempt using the pre execution script to start up the SSH server on the host in order to monitor progress as the system is being installed. Additionally, a post-execution script that handles the next step of the setup process I am using for hosts would be ideal. I would like to have it download a script from a webserver, change permissions and then execute as root to install puppet which I am using to go from OS installed to configured.
Combining pxebooting, kickstart and puppet I am very close to being able to create a bare-metal install/recovery process of our application. Assuming that I can bridge the gap between install and configuration with this scripting, I would also like to attempt using this methodology to install on EC2. If that can be done, it would provide a truly effective last-ditch failover plan for maintaining uptime after a catastrophic failure.
The only bit o' honey that I would like to add to the information that is pretty clearly laid out in that post is that when handling this over KVM-over-IP, you must be aware that the visual indicators will not be available. This can and should be handled by using pre and/or post execution scripts within the kickstart configuration. At minimum, you should ensure that the post execution script reboots the machine.
I do not have extensive experience with Kickstart, but it does seem worthwhile to suggest doing some testing of your own with respect to the pre and post execution scripts. Moving forward I would like to attempt using the pre execution script to start up the SSH server on the host in order to monitor progress as the system is being installed. Additionally, a post-execution script that handles the next step of the setup process I am using for hosts would be ideal. I would like to have it download a script from a webserver, change permissions and then execute as root to install puppet which I am using to go from OS installed to configured.
Combining pxebooting, kickstart and puppet I am very close to being able to create a bare-metal install/recovery process of our application. Assuming that I can bridge the gap between install and configuration with this scripting, I would also like to attempt using this methodology to install on EC2. If that can be done, it would provide a truly effective last-ditch failover plan for maintaining uptime after a catastrophic failure.
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