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Jun
25thRazor OSS #2 : Public Release of MK
Shortly after the open-source release of Razor in late May, we started to see requests from users for more information about the Microkernel that is used by Razor. What distribution was used as the basis for this Microkernel? What services does it provide? What is involved in building a custom Microkernel that will support my hardware? Will the Microkernel be open-sourced as well? If so, will it be part of the Razor project or a separate (but related) project? At the same time that these requests started coming in from the Razor community, we saw our first Razor issue that was directly linked to the Razor Microkernel. The issue was with support for a networking card that we hadn’t seen before (the Broadcom NetXtreme II card) that was presenting some issues for a Razor user (The Microkernel it wasn’t checking in with the Razor server on machines that used this network card because the it couldn’t connect to the underlying network). In the end, the issue turned out to be that the firmware needed to support this network card was not included in the Microkernel (even though firmware for this card that would work with our Microkernel was readily available). Our intention all along was to make this project publically available, but we still hadn’t worked out the last remaining issues around automating the build of a Microkernel ISO from the Razor Microkernel project itself (at the time of the Razor release late last month the process of building a [...]
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Jun
5thQuick Videos : Razor Webinar & MoreThis is just a quick post with some videos relevant to the Razor project. First off is the Puppet Webinar around Razor with live demo and Q & A. Puppet Razor Webinar Next is a couple videos generated using Gource to show the work on both the Razor project and the Razor Microkernel project. Just for fun but pretty cool stuff: .nick
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Jun
5thAPI All The Things! : Razor API Wiki
I mentioned in a slightly important recent post that Razor, the new cloud provisioning tool for bare & virtual metal, has a full RESTful API. Now I back that up with some documentation. Freshly added to the Razor Wiki on github is a overview of the Razor API. This includes examples on the JSON format and code samples for Adding, Removing, Updating, and Getting Razor configuration. And I took the time to provide code samples for each section in Ruby, Perl, Python, Java, C# and PowerShell (for my PS buddies, you know who you are). Go read it here : Razor API Overview This is the tip of the spear and there will be more documents on API elements for each Razor Slice. The Razor project is in beta and so the API may change as things move forward. Also, since this is a community project. If you have ideas or code that will improve anything please fork and submit a pull request. Feedback & comments appreciated. .nick
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May
25thAlternate PXE/iPXE Config : RazorCertain user may encounter issues with PXE/iPXE and Razor with specific broadcom networking cards. There is an alternate way to configure DHCP for Razor and I have created a Wiki page on the Razor project to walk your through setting it up. Go here to read the page: https://github.com/puppetlabs/Razor/wiki/Alternate-Pre-boot-Options-for-Compatibility .nick
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May
21stLex Parsimoniae : Cloud Provisioning with a Razor
Blogging has been very difficult for me over the last 4 months. My move to the Office of the CTO within EMC changed much of what I did and left me searching for content I could write about. Most of what I was dealing with on a daily basis was either too early to mention or too secret to reveal. Today, this changes with the release of a project I have spent the majority of my days and nights working on this year. Without long-worded wind up I am proud to announce the release of Razor, a cloud-provisioning tool to change the way we look at provisioning hardware for cloud stacks. Razor is a software application, which is a combination of Ruby (main logic) and Node.js (API, Image Service) for rapidly provisioning operating systems and hypervisors for BOTH physical and virtual servers. It is designed to make standing up the base substrate underneath cloud deployments both simple and transactional. Now at this point, many of you are thinking: “Great, another *cloud* provisioning tool.” And I don’t blame you at all. So what makes Razor different than many other tools out there like Cobbler, Dell’s Crowbar, or other deployment services? Just about everything. The real answer to that question is related to the reason this project is named Razor. We based much of our design theory after Ockham’s razor. It is based on the belief that OS/hypervisor deployment should be simple, succinct, and incredibly flexible. Many products out there try to [...]
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