3 ms·

> If I want my Supermicro/Quanta/Dell to boot from an image in a similar fashion I have to build the image, I have to host the image, I have to make it availabl

by weikju 2y ago

> If I want my Supermicro/Quanta/Dell to boot from an image in a similar fashion I have to build the image, I have to host the image, I have to make it available on the network, I have to configure DHCP, I have to configure the BMC (and Redfish is probably not implemented quite right, lets be honest here), then I can boot from it. But do you need to boot a custom image? 37signal's move off of cloud revolved around the idea of shoving everything into containers and deploying the containers using something like a cross between docker-compose and capistrano. The host OS barely matters at this point. A scenario like yours is more the outlier than the norm, at least from my experience.

synicalx 2y ago
> But do you need to boot a custom image? You still need to boot from something custom or otherwise, and that something needs to be updated and maintained. Realistically it's probably going to be slightly more on the custom side once you take into account drivers for special snowflake stuff like fancy NIC's and storage controllers. The OS itself is largely irrelevant, but managing the consistency its state (or lack thereof) and configuration across a fleet is quite important IMO. When you're talking bare metal you have a lot of other security holes you need to deal with as well; BMC's, firmware, drivers etc all need to be kept up to date (and tested).
- 28304283409234 2y ago
  True but this is so very trivial nowadays. Any current Linux will boot any current server hardware without problem. A one file Ansible playbook will set it up to run whatever comes next.
- packetlost 2y ago
  Unless you have exotic needs or are at the absolute bleeding edge, you won't generally run into driver issues, most stuff has pretty good Linux support if you're running recent enough kernels.

3 ms·

> If I want my Supermicro/Quanta/Dell to boot from an image in a similar fashion I have to build the image, I have to host the image, I have to make it availabl

by weikju 2y ago

synicalx 2y ago
> But do you need to boot a custom image? You still need to boot from something custom or otherwise, and that something needs to be updated and maintained. Realistically it's probably going to be slightly more on the custom side once you take into account drivers for special snowflake stuff like fancy NIC's and storage controllers. The OS itself is largely irrelevant, but managing the consistency its state (or lack thereof) and configuration across a fleet is quite important IMO. When you're talking bare metal you have a lot of other security holes you need to deal with as well; BMC's, firmware, drivers etc all need to be kept up to date (and tested).
- 28304283409234 2y ago
  True but this is so very trivial nowadays. Any current Linux will boot any current server hardware without problem. A one file Ansible playbook will set it up to run whatever comes next.
- packetlost 2y ago
  Unless you have exotic needs or are at the absolute bleeding edge, you won't generally run into driver issues, most stuff has pretty good Linux support if you're running recent enough kernels.