Heterogenous Operating System Support

This file documents how to deploy multiple different operating systems

in Crowbar.

Right now deploying a hetrogenous OS cluster in OpenCrowbar relies on

a | few prerequisites:

• Online mode.

You need to have the provisioner configure to operate in online

mode to deploy multiple different operating systems. This is

needed to allow the operating systems to pick up all the packages

they well need for a node installation. See README.package-updates

for more information about setting the provisioner to online-mode.

• online_mirror stanzas in the deployed provisioner proposal for all

  operating systems you wish to deploy.

These are needed so that the provisioner find the proper location

to copy all the information needed to kick off a network-based

installation of an operating system. The defaout proposal includes

stanzas for the Ubuntu and CentOS operating system releases Crowbar

supports.

• Proper recipe supoprt for the OS in the provisioner.

  Right now we only include support for Ubuntu and CentOS. Adding Redhat support is trivial, and adding SuSE support is slightly less so.

Once the above prerequisites are met, you can use the crowbar

provisioner command to query the list of available oses a node can

install, and view and change the OS the provisioner will deploy on to

a node. The new commands are:

• crowbar provisioner oses
• crowbar provisioner current_os
• crowbar provisioner set_os

You can run these commands at any time, and the next time a node

transitions through the installing or reinstall states it will have

the appropriate operating system installed.