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Feb
27thVMware & Puppet : One More Step ForwardI wake up everyday committed to not doing things the same old way. That is why my title has that funny word ‘Automation’ in it. I am tasked with finding a way to make what is fragile, expensive, risky, and complex; easier to manage. While most of what I am working on at VMware is not ready for the light of day. There are some things that have come out of our work that would have a greater benefit being in the public space. If you are even an infrequent reader of this blog (which given my posts lately, is everyone) you know that I am a huge fan of PuppetLabs. More than that I am a huge fan of automation using DevOps-style toolsets enabled by community development. Right now I belong to an amazing team of crazy talented engineers. I rarely go a week without seeing something that makes me wish I was capable of doing a backflip. I am proud to announce that today some of that magic is now being put in a place for everyone. Today VMware and PuppetLabs are releasing the first set of modules for managing VMware environments. This brings a bunch of new features for the first time: Management for the vCenter Appliance /w Complete initialization – Just point as a VM that was deployed from the OVF and it will standup vCenter. Datacenter and Cluster configuration – HA, DRS, and more. The one caveat being EVC (but coming soon) ESXi Host – [...]
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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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