[Opensource] how to set up a lab of linux boxen

[Chris Samuel]

----- "victor rajewski" <askvictor at gmail.com> wrote:

> Is anyone running a lab full of linux machines?

We run Linux clusters where it's really important to
have the same image everywhere, and rather than using
images techniques we reinstall nodes using kickstart
(for CentOS) or AutoYAST (for SLES).

We also kickstart install our training room of Fedora
machines which have heterogenous hardware, which is
probably closer to what you are thinking of.

Debian/Ubuntu has FAI (Fully Automated Installer) but I've
never touched that, their website has a slideshow and some
movies of it in action:

http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/

For management of them once they're up it's probably worth
looking at configuration management tools like Puppet (which
was talked about at last weeks LUV meeting), cfengine, etc..

Best of luck!
Chris
-- 
Christopher Samuel - (03) 9925 4751 - Systems Manager
 The Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing
 P.O. Box 201, Carlton South, VIC 3053, Australia
VPAC is a not-for-profit Registered Research Agency