Provisioning - manual and/or automated OS deployments to physical and virtual machines.
2
votes
2answers
113 views
Factory Reset Cisco SPA504G without admin password
I've been trying to factory reset some SPA500 phones, specifically the 504G but the old provider has locked out everything.
I need to reset about 50 phones for use with a new service. I've man in the ...
-2
votes
1answer
57 views
How to build a Mac OSX 10.8 “clean” NetInstall (not restore) image? [closed]
I have purchased and installed Mac OS X 10.8 on my MacBook Pro.
With some easy steps or even an automatic tool I could easily create USB bootable media from the "Install Mountain Lion" app that I get ...
2
votes
2answers
94 views
Asset Tracking: Best Practices
We'd like to track I.T. assets across different organizations and I have a bunch of questions:
What is a good, systematic method to choose a universally unique asset tag (i.e. name)?
What method ...
21
votes
6answers
2k views
Why use Chef/Puppet over shell scripts?
New to Puppet and Chef tools. Seems like the job that they are doing can be done with shell scripting. Maybe it was done in shell scripts until these came along.
I would agree they are more readable. ...
0
votes
0answers
51 views
What is the difference between spacewalk-clone-by-date and spacewalk-create-channel?
I am working with Red Hat Satellite these days and I still wonder about the difference between spacewalk-clone-by-date and spacewalk-create-channel.
I have created the channels with these commands:
...
0
votes
1answer
159 views
Vagrant / chef - nginx cookbook extend
I am fairly new to using chef, particularly with vagrant so this will most likely be a silly question to the more experienced users out there.
I am using this cookbook: ...
0
votes
1answer
79 views
Is it possible to create a RHEL 5.7 channel based on updated (5.9) RHEL channels in Satellite?
I would however like to kickstart new servers based on RHEL 5.7. Both official Red Hat channels in Satellite are already updated to RHEL 5.9 and RHEL 6.4 though.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 for ...
0
votes
1answer
21 views
Why does Satellite need a kickstartable distribution for cloned channels, but not on the official main Red Hat Channel?
I have been using Satellite for a while now and I am able to kickstart machines directly from the official main RH channels
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (v. 5 for 64-bit x86_64)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ...
1
vote
1answer
79 views
Manage multiple ssh-keys for one user with Chef
I started to use Chef in my infrastructure, but cannot make recipe like this:
-each developer has own public ssh-key.
-in remote server there is an unique user, named ubuntu
I want to use data bags ...
1
vote
1answer
154 views
Using Chef Solo to provision a Windows EC2 instance and bootstrap it
I'm trying to automate our CI process for a couple of .NET apps, and in a perfect world I'd like to spin up a Windows EC2 instance for each, bootstrap the instance to install Chef Solo and then ...
0
votes
1answer
44 views
Dependencies of puppet modules
I am trying to get acquainted with puppet, so here is my n00b question.
In a module I want to use there are some includes, like
include gcc
include wget
If I just install this module and use it ...
0
votes
1answer
80 views
Recommendations for bootstrapping Ubuntu server
When I create new Ubuntu 12.10 instances, I typically bootstrap them by manually SSHing onto the machine and editing the sudoers to put a NOPASSWD on the default user (e.g., ec2-user, azureuser, ...
0
votes
0answers
46 views
User Account provisioning with multiple directories, folder and file permissions [closed]
I have been looking for a tool that would perform user-management within two Active Directory servers, along with folder/file permissions. The took would have to interact with an ERP as a ...
2
votes
2answers
80 views
What would be the best method to provide my server environment as a software package to be installed on a different server?
I have some software running on my AWS cloud and I would like to be able to offer this software package as an on-premise solution so that anyone can configure it on their own servers. What would be ...
8
votes
3answers
239 views
Technology for short-lived private VMs
I'm trying to build a system that will run short-lived (CI and test builds) of software components, it's mandatory according to my requirements that each live on a private host. I'm taking that ...
0
votes
1answer
117 views
Provision server with chef-solo as root?
I'm using knife to bootstrap my VM with vanilla Debian 7.0 installation. In bootstrap stage I'm just setting sources.list, updating & upgrading system, then I install buil-essential, rsync and ...
2
votes
2answers
614 views
Why can't “knife data bag from file” find existing json file on chef server?
Summary:
I'm running into a problem with "knife data bag from file", where knife doesn't recognize the .json data bag file pulled down from a remote git repo.
Background:
I'm currently trying to ...
0
votes
1answer
101 views
Software to automate physical provisioning of GRUB, linux, windows, dualboot
Is there software that can help automate (or make it repeatable) setting up PC's or lab servers where the setup includes GRUB for bootloading multi-boot for Windows, Debian, CentOS, etc.
I was ...
0
votes
1answer
137 views
Manage multiple zLinux SuSE Servers [closed]
My shop virtualizes a few hundred SuSE 11.1 servers through IBM's zVM hypervisor. (If you've never heard of zVM, it runs on a mainframe and virtualizes Linux in the s390x architecture. It's a ...
2
votes
2answers
1k views
Which EC2 instance best for Chef server?
I want to setup chef server as cheaply as possible, while leaving it enough room to run without crashing. The only article I found on the subject warned that RabbitMQ would crash on a micro instance ...
0
votes
1answer
97 views
Provisioning System for Enterprise
In our companie we have a lot of systems: CRM, ERP, payroll system, etc..
The problem is that NONE of these systems are integrated with our Active Directory. From a admin and security perspective ...
8
votes
4answers
443 views
Advantages of thick provisioning of storage over thin provisioning with virtual machines
I typically use thin-provisioning of storage space when building VMs: it provides a lot of flexibility, and seems to be faster to build.
The only potential definite advantage I can see is to ensure ...
1
vote
3answers
267 views
Configure HP RAID in Pre-OS environment
I need to set the RAID configurations of a HP machine during the provisioning process of OS deployment. I have come across a tool named Praid.exe but having read the documentation I get the impression ...
3
votes
3answers
1k views
Kickstart: Serve dynamic kickstart images via a CGI or PHP script?
I'd like to Kickstart a couple dozen RHEL6/SL6 servers. However, some of these servers are different and I don't want to create a new ks.cfg file for each class of server.
Is there any way I can ...
4
votes
3answers
248 views
Generate TFTP Content on the fly?
I know this isn't the purpose of TFTP, but I'm working in an environment where a lot of different types of devices pull provisioning info from a TFTP server. What I'm developing is a provisioning ...
3
votes
2answers
200 views
Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) with a raw Windows 2008R2 ISO
I am new to WAIK, and am trying to figure out how to build a WIM image from the Windows 2008 R2 ISO media.
So far I have been unsuccessful in finding this information.
Is this possible, and if so, ...
5
votes
3answers
180 views
What options do I have to clone a physical server as easily as a virtual machine?
We use virtual machines a great deal at my company, Hyper-V mainly but we have also dabbled with ESXi plus vCenter. Besides the traditional advantage of being able to consolidate many physical ...
1
vote
2answers
214 views
User provisioning script for Exchange and AD?
I'm currently running Exchange 2007 and Windows Server 2003 ADs. If I wanted to create a user creation/deletion script that would create and delete users, what would be the best way of dealing with ...
0
votes
3answers
432 views
Provisioning environment(PXE) for windows xp, 7, server 2003, 2008 and RHEL 5
I am working for a small shop where we want to provision all the hosts from one single location. Right now, we use Legacy RIS on Win server 2003 to deploy hosts via PXE boot. Though this method works, ...
1
vote
3answers
3k views
With ESXi and Windows Server 2008, can the provisioned size for a disk be reduced?
When we first setup ESXi, we over allocated drive space (allocated 300 GBs of a 250GB hard drive) thinking ESXi would shuffle things intelligently like it does with memory and CPU but found out later ...
1
vote
4answers
92 views
Breaking a RAID 1 as a way to Provision systems?
Suppose that I have a nix system whose filesystems are entirely supported by two drives in a RAID 1. If I were to breakdown that RAID, could I then use one of the disks to recreate the system on ...
2
votes
1answer
292 views
Server installation logging / logbook / diary?
Are there some ways field-tested ways to keep a kind of logbook for a server? Including:
software installations (and de-installations)
custom configurations (e.g. of a webserver, ssh daemon, etc.)
...
2
votes
2answers
321 views
Need help with MS SQL SAN disk array provisioning
We have a HP MSA70 with 20x300gb 2,5" 10k disks allocated for our SQL2008 server.
Our usage of the SQL server is:
50 concurrent users of our ERP system(Visma business) - 70/30 read/write.
2500 ...
0
votes
1answer
311 views
Disk provisioning type for virtualized Exchange server on NFS
We have a legacy VMware Server connecting to an NFS datastore that runs two Exchange 2007 servers (edge + hub) on Windows 2003. We are a small org with about 50 users.
We're in the process of moving ...
3
votes
2answers
183 views
How do large organizations with large turnover and many systems perform account provisioning?
Our current solution
At the moment, it is essentially a bunch of scripts which are executed by an in-house developed console menu that is Perl-based. Each script is associated to a step in the ...
1
vote
2answers
169 views
What is VPS provisioning?
I'm starting to get my feet wet in the VPS world, so I have some newbie questions for you gurus.
The first is this (as title): what is VPS provisioning?
When you do it and what it's useful for?
...
1
vote
1answer
818 views
How do I configure a guest VM's static IP address automatically in Citrix XenServer?
To facilitate automation of guest VM provisioning, how do I set (in a script) the IP address on a guest VM's NIC (or NIC's) once a new VM has booted?
Is there a way to "inject" netsh commands via the ...
2
votes
4answers
573 views
How to best implement multi-os desktop provisioning?
In our offices we use an Ubuntu 10.04 LTS server, and are building a little (8 seats + 1 teacher seat) teaching room. We'd like to implement fast & easy provisioning of the desktops operating ...
0
votes
1answer
214 views
Migrating Identity Providers - specifying a new users password hash
We'd like to switch Identity Provider (and Web Access Manager), and also the user directory we use, but would like to do so without users needing to change their password.
We currently have the SSHA ...
0
votes
2answers
96 views
What is the best way to apply your old settings / environment to new server
Let's say you have your favorite settings with zsh, vim, screen, etc., behaving the way you want on some boxes.
What is the best way to apply these settings / environments to a new server? Assuming ...
1
vote
2answers
1k views
Question about VMWare thin provisioning
I'm playing around with virtual disks and thin provisioning and have a question about it.
I've created several disks and allocated space to with thin provisioning. Is it possible to allocate more ...
2
votes
5answers
200 views
How to configure almost 3 dozen laptops quickly
I need to configure almost 3 dozen laptops. We need half of them to have different IP addresses. Would configuring one laptop and then ghosting the rest be the fastest way to do this or is there a ...
0
votes
2answers
584 views
How-to: install all packages from DVD when setting-up an RHEL server (text mode)?
I have tried googling, and so far have found nothing.
Is there a way to select all packages from the install DVD for Red Hat Enterprise Linux when doing an installation?
With the GUI installer, I ...
0
votes
1answer
286 views
Windows pysical server provisioning question with HPSA 7.8
I have a physical server that I am trying to provision Windows to. At 58% of the way through copying files form the Core to the target server, the process hangs with either a samba time-out or an ...
1
vote
1answer
258 views
Deployment/provisioning tool for commercial applications (not developed in-house)
I help manage a few hosted commercial applications, and we have a lot of manual processes involved when doing new customer-instance deployments into the shared (multitenant) environment. Allow me to ...
5
votes
3answers
284 views
What is your provisioning method? (out of the cardboard -> bare metal -> fully functional server)?
Trying to cut down our deploy times and looking for suggestions and shortcuts you or your team uses to get back in the terminal and out of the data center. Looking at the entire process from ordering ...
0
votes
1answer
165 views
Tools for laptop software provisioning?
At our company, we receive a laptop that is mostly pre-configured for a new employee using their own software provisioning tool. However, with our development teams, there tends to be a number of ...
2
votes
2answers
833 views
Data Center Automation tools and Novell Suse Linux?
I'm looking for info to automate the patching/updating process for several hundred Suse machines.
Apart from Zenworks and SMT is there other patch management/automation tools you know with good ...
15
votes
5answers
2k views
FLOSS Server management and audit tools
I've been working with HP's Server Automation tool suite for a long time, and while it's a great tool - it's too much for a small business or home network to use (more accurately: it's way too ...
0
votes
4answers
214 views
virtualization automation
Basic idea of what I'm trying to do:
I'd like to setup a virtual staging cluster for a website i'm working on. Ideally I'd like to make a change, fire up and deploy it to the virtual staging cluster, ...
