DRBL and Clonezilla

[Airbozo]

OK, quick note since I am swamped.

I am setting up a clone server based on Fedora 10, DRBL and Clonezilla to clone hard drives for a project. I will post up links later, but this is a place ot share knowledge and experiences.

I have a project to build 6 blade systems. Each Blade Chassis will hold 10 blades. Each blade is 2 complete nodes. Each node has 2 5670s and 2x 2gb (one for each processor) plus one 2.5" hdd.

All of these systems (120 in total) will be running Windows Server 2008 R2.

So I didn't want to install 120 copies of windows (we are not setup for network installs yet), and install and configure the customers software on 120 systems. Plus this is a rush order and I didn't want to camp out here for the next few days either. My solution? Install once and clone the drives. Since this is a volume license setup, All of the systems will have the same key. In fact everything will be identical until the SE sets it up at the customers site, then the hostname and IP address will change.

I have used the clonezilla live cd in the past and although it is slow, I found that it can be automated. Then I ran across the Clonezilla server tools. After a little reading I was able to setup this clonezilla server with minimal effort. In fact the hardest part was getting the base OS since our download speed at work sucks rocks.


I will post more info later since I am under the gun and must work on multiple projects at once, like the quad node servers (7 of them ) that go with this order running RHEL5v4 and a custom designed faceplate for another customer.. (more on that later).

[Oneslowz28]

While I will never have a need for cloning more than 2 or 3 drives, I am very interested in this. Can't wait for the additional post!

[Airbozo]

Update:

Still slammed, but I just tested a clone with 4 systems and the only extra time involved was waiting for the other clients to boot from the network. Once all systems are booted, then the image is sent out via multicast (other options are available, but I have not tested them yet). My only concern IS multicast since there is no verification. I am looking to see if I can run a verify command after the clone is done. One of the other options is unicast and then I think broadcast. I will be testing all of them to find the best solution.

This is great. My nightmares over the last week have been centered on how I can install verify and test 148 systems by friday... This takes care of the drive cloning, now I have to setup a multicast HD feed to test these boxes with known graded HD streams (4 of them ranging from grade 3 to 4.5).

[Luke122]

Back in the day, I used a Ghost multicast setup to deploy 120 systems at once; 4 classrooms. We disconnected the 4 rooms from the rest of the network, and ran all 4 to a dedicated server on a cart. We used PXE boot to pull the client setup, and had everything scripted. Once all the systems were connected, we pushed it out to all of them at once.

At the end of the push, the systems would reboot and run a script where we would type in the system number and room number. From that, it would rename the computer, and assign the proper IP address to each.

120 systems = 30 minutes, then 1-2 minutes at each to type in a few numbers. With 4 of us, we imaged them all and configured them in less than an hour.

[OvRiDe]

You might check out http://www.fogproject.org/. I just finished deploying VM's running FOG across our enterprise in order to handle imaging needs. I'm not sure if this will help your situation but it has saved me days and days.

[Airbozo]

Luke: I am doing exactly what you did, but for free...

OvRiDe; Looks like we are doing exactly the same thing with different setups.

This setup so far has saved me 3 days of work. When I image the 6 blade chassis (120 full systems) it will save me weeks of work.

Still busy as hell and to top it all off we are doing our ISO 9001:2008 pre-assessment audit today and I seem to be the one with most of the answers... The real Audit is on the 2nd...

[x88x]

I've only used the live-CD version of CloneZilla, but I love it. In my experience at least, it's actually quite fast...especially compared to Ghost.. -_^ 15 minutes for an 80GB image off a USB drive is pretty good in my book. I'm very interested to find out how well the server version works on a large scale though. I seem to remember there is a limit on the number of targets it can do....but that may have been the unicast configuration...

EDIT:
Oh, and I think it goes without saying that if you can, pictures of this setup are required.

[Airbozo]

I've only used the live-CD version of CloneZilla, but I love it. In my experience at least, it's actually quite fast...especially compared to Ghost.. -_^ 15 minutes for an 80GB image off a USB drive is pretty good in my book. I'm very interested to find out how well the server version works on a large scale though. I seem to remember there is a limit on the number of targets it can do....but that may have been the unicast configuration...

EDIT:
Oh, and I think it goes without saying that if you can, pictures of this setup are required.

As far as I can tell, the "theoretical" limit is 253 clients per NIC card. The "working" limit may be lower, but since it is using multicast the bandwidth should be the same for 253 clients as it is for 1. I will be doing a test later today to see the impact of cloning 60 systems at once.

I completely forgot about taking pictures of the parts. Looking at 240 xeon's sitting on a cart was quite impressive. I had to shut down one of our SGI servers just to have enough power for all 6 of these blade chassis.

[DrkSide]

This is the same setup that I used to use when I did classroom setup for a training facility. I would make an image for whatever version machine ( we had a few difference levels) and whatever software was needed. Each time the class rolled around I would network boot the pcs and then push the image out. out of probably ~200 images I never had one fail once it started.

There is also a windows program that you can install that will respond to the clonezilla server and you can reboot and start imaging from windows. I wasn't around long enough to deploy the windows stuff but it always did interest me.

[simon275]

Nice work! Tools like clonezilla are a life saver. That many blades running windows... WHY!!!!!