[Linuxcoe-devel] LinuxCOE V5 : VM builder

[Louis B. <lou...@hp...>]

Hello,

Here is something that I briefly discussed with Bryang and I thought I'd
bounce it off all of you.

Everyone here is familiar with LinuxCOE main functionality, which is to
provide a small .iso image allowing a server to boot off this media and
to auto-install according to instructions coming from the  System
Designer web interface.

Now, while keeping the same functionality, let's imagine for a minute
that another functionality of SysDes is to provide instructions to a
back-end process that is in charge of doing the actual installation into
a Virtual Machine container (either Xen, KVM, maybe VMware).

For example, you select all the options as we do in the current System
Designer, and then you say that you want this O/S instance installed
into a KVM disk image.

LinuxCOE V5 goes off, provide this information to the back-end process
which creates the KVM disk container and kickstart the installation into
the VM using the LinuxCOE provided install boot image (the one we
currently provide). Once the installation is complete, this back-end
process deletes the install boot image and the resulting KVM disk
container is what is provided to the user on some FTP server.

I had this idea yesterday and didn't have much time to think it over.
But after all, this is what FOSS collaboration is all about, right ? Not
doing everything by ourselves ?

Major restrictions I can see with this :
	- Needs a powerful server to build all these VM
	- Needs a lot of diskspace to host VM container even temporarily
	- Sensible amount of work required to build the back-end process
	- Best design of this one would require to isolate it from VM
technologies (i.e. use of libvirt or something similar)

In the end, one would come to System Designer V5, select its O/S and
options, and some cycles later, get is VM container, ready to be run.
Better yet, this could be an add-on to existing LinuxCOE V5 that would
continue offering the provisioning infrastructure as we know it now.

Does this make any sense ?

Regards,
--=20
Louis Bouchard, Linux Support Engineer
EMEA Linux Competency Center,
Linux Ambassador, HP

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