Provision via PXE - Cobbler and what else!

[sujit-jadhav]

With recent issue which we faced with Cobbler 2.8.5, I still wonder how come cobbler can remove files for the release product. This has caused the impact on the Omnia. In Omnia 1.1 we are forced to migrate to Cobbler 3.2.0 with CentOS8 as base OS, boot loaders are still available for Cobbler 3.2.0.

Note: Boot loader issue occurs with Cobbler 3.2.1 as well.
In Omnia 1.1 :

• We can start with Cobbler 3.2.0 and if Cobbler 3.3 gets released during sprint 4/5 we can still migrate to Cobbler 3.3.

• Along with Cobbler we can have our own container which will host dhcp and tftp to provision CentOS 7.9. This involves less efforts. We are already hosting N/W Management container in same fashion which provisions OS10 image.

• This custom container will be activated only if there is any failure in Cobbler. We will not have any impact on the 1.1 if there is sudden change from Cobbler side.

• We should start giving option of Warewulf4 as an alternative to Cobbler.

• Terraform is an another option to consider.

[lwilson]

I think Warewulf 4 is a good alternative. I also think we should look at Tinkerbell (https://tinkerbell.org/).

Again, we aren't limited to any one provisioner. Ideally we should be able to let the user decide which tool they are most comfortable with.