About Cobbler

• Project started ~2005
• Goal #1: bring sysadmins together to create and share superior deployment technology
• Goal #2: provide tools for both physical AND virtual deployments
• Goal #3: embrace the unix philosophy; simple tools working together
• it's an application
• it's also a web service for applications

Who uses it?

• A few examples: Who Uses Cobbler
• Hosting companies
• University departments
• Research grids/clusters
• Government agencies
• Applications:
  • Spacewalk/Satellite
  • Ovirt.org
  • Beaker
  • Genome
  • Various in-house software

Types of Installs That Cobbler Performs:

• Netboot/PXE by MAC, IP, or menu
• re-installs / upgrades of an existing Linux systems
• network install ISO generation (PXE not required)
• virtual machines -- kickstarts or images

Architectures supported (reinstalls & netboot):

• x86 / x86_64
• ppc / ppc64
• ia64
• s390 / s390x (requires Cobbler 1.5)

What Works?

• Installation targets:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • Fedora
  • CentOS, Scientific Linux
  • OpenSuSE
  • Debian (90% there)
  • Ubuntu (90% there)
  • Windows (virt, evolving)
• Server platforms:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4+
  • any Fedora
  • Debian (partial; packaging pending)
  • OpenSuSE (partial; packaging pending)

Conceptual overview:

Details about Bare Metal Installs:

• Cobbler manages your PXE tree for you
• Built-in PXE boot loop prevention
• Auto-generated PXE menus for "off the truck" deployment
• "cobbler buildiso" for situations that can't do PXE (static/policy-driven)

Details about Reinstalls:

• Suppose you don't have a PXE environment
• You can reinstall a host over SSH
• You can also perform upgrades this way
• Works well with Func

Details about Virtual Installs:

• Uses a helper tool called "koan"
• Virtualization parameters are centrally managed
• Control over RAM, CPU, disk
• Built in support for LVM volume groups
• Choose your own adventure:
  • libvirt guests: Xen PV, FV, KVM
  • non-libvirt: VMware server, workstation, ESX (?)

Need A Picture?

Power Features:

• Cheetah Powered -- Open Ended Templating Engine On Steroids
• Snippets
• Integrated Yum Mirroring
• Advanced Networking Configuration -- bonding, vlans
• DHCP Management
• DNS Management
• Power Management
• Configuration Management Hooks (puppet)
• Built-in Lightweight CMS
• BIOS/Firmware upgrades (ex: Dell, HP)
• Remotely erase machines (DBAN)
• Extensive anaconda monitoring features
• Multi-server replication (picture: next slide)

Easy setup process:

yum install cobbler
vim /etc/cobbler/settings
cobbler check
vim /etc/cobbler/settings # maybe

Command line access is simple: Setup:

cobbler import --name=RHEL5 --mirror=/mnt/dvd
cobbler import --name=Fedora --path=rsync://foo

Create and edit distros:

cobbler distro edit --name=RHEL5-i386 --kopts="noapic x=y z=4"

Define some roles for your systems to fill:

cobbler profile edit --name=RHEL5-i386 --kickstart=/path/to/template.ks --ksmeta="somevar=1 othervar=2" 
cobbler profile copy --name=RHEL5-i386 --newname=webservers
cobbler profile edit --name=webservers --virt-ram=2048 

Map hardware to those roles:

cobbler system add --name=foosball --mac=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF --profile=RHEL5-i386
cobbler system edit --name=foosball --ip=192.168.10.50 # DHCP reservations!
cobbler system edit --name=foosball --dns-name=foosball # DNS setup

Reinstall systems you have defined:

cobbler system edit --name=foosball --netboot-enabled=1 
cobbler system reboot --name=foosball

Also help manage updates as they relate to installation and post-installation:

cobbler repo add --name=f10-updates --mirror=http://foo
cobbler reposync
cobbler profile edit --name=desktops --repos="f10-updates"

Want to install a VM? Everything is easy, since it's centrally managed

koan --list-profiles [--server=cobbler.example.org]
koan --virt --profile=foo [...]
koan --virt --system=bar [...]

Reinstall a physical box?

koan --replace-self --system=bar

Users don't have to remember 15 different virt parameters!

We have a Web UI...

For Developers:

• Python API
• XMLRPC API
• Triggers system for hooking in with other software
• User extensible authn/authz

Release cycle:

• Relatively fast moving due to lots of contributors
• All code kept in git
• Kernel versioning scheme, odd=development, even=stable
• Current stable is 1.4.X
• Stable dot releases on current branch as needed
• New major releases every 2-3 months, ideally 1-2 months

Future roadmap and plans:

• Better cross-distro support for non-homogenous environments
• Keeping up with virtualization developments
• Continual web app improvements
• Integration with other config management systems?
• All the great ideas people have shared in Trac.
• World domination -- be THE go to install server for any OS

Want to Learn More?

• Lots of documentation: fedorahosted.org/cobbler
• Active mailing list: mailing list
• IRC channel: #cobbler, irc.freenode.net