Automatically provision dedicated servers... how?

[MannDude]

Interesting to see a lot of people say it's easy to do with NocPC... but in my experience, any server I've ever ordered, was setup manually and took anywhere from 1-5 days to process the order.

Is there some limitation involved that prevents most providers from doing this? I assume in most cases when a server is ordered it may not actually be physically racked or built yet, hence the processing delays?

 

[AndrewM]

Interesting to see a lot of people say it's easy to do with NocPC... but in my experience, any server I've ever ordered, was setup manually and took anywhere from 1-5 days to process the order.

Is there some limitation involved that prevents most providers from doing this? I assume in most cases when a server is ordered it may not actually be physically racked or built yet, hence the processing delays?

I think auto-install and auto-provision have been confused. Auto install simply makes the client's or the provider's life easier because they can start the installation, and it will do it for them (in lieu of manually doing it). 

I would caution that most provider's don't offer "instant setup" on dedicated servers because of the price point (do you really want someone dropping anywhere from $80 to $500 or more of dirty money on your door step?), and because of other tasks that need to be performed pre-release of the server.

 

[MartinD]

I think auto-install and auto-provision have been confused. Auto install simply makes the client's or the provider's life easier because they can start the installation, and it will do it for them (in lieu of manually doing it). 

I would caution that most provider's don't offer "instant setup" on dedicated servers because of the price point (do you really want someone dropping anywhere from $80 to $500 or more of dirty money on your door step?), and because of other tasks that need to be performed pre-release of the server.

Well, this is all quite subjective. Once you've been around a while it becomes quite easy to spot the dodgy orders; those done with fake details, probably stolen money etc. It's a stage most of us will go through when building a business and becoming aware of these patters or 'guts feelings' saves you a lot of money in the long run. If people don't bother to learn that particular craft then anything else is consequential and irrelevant.

As for auto-install and provisioning, I think they go hand in hand so not so much confused. Yes, there is an element of hands-on provisioning required but that's just for initial racking. Once it's racked and you've checked the bois/IPMI settings, everything else can be done from your desk for the most part. Adding mac addresses to a DB so that it can be run from PXE etc is simple enough and is part of the auto-provision and install process.

The biggest issue, from what I can see, is getting a system in place that works the way you want it to. NocPS is 'okay' and lots of people use it but I've never really liked it. Ubersmith can work too but then you're spending a large chunk of money on a product that will be bloatware for a lot of companies. In the end I found an opensource piece of software that worked 80% of the time and had 70% of what I wanted. A bit of fiddling around later saw it operating more to how I like but there's still something missing.

Ultimately it comes down to what you can afford in time and money I guess!

 

[Steven F]

Well, this is all quite subjective. Once you've been around a while it becomes quite easy to spot the dodgy orders; those done with fake details, probably stolen money etc. It's a stage most of us will go through when building a business and becoming aware of these patters or 'guts feelings' saves you a lot of money in the long run. If people don't bother to learn that particular craft then anything else is consequential and irrelevant.

As for auto-install and provisioning, I think they go hand in hand so not so much confused. Yes, there is an element of hands-on provisioning required but that's just for initial racking. Once it's racked and you've checked the bois/IPMI settings, everything else can be done from your desk for the most part. Adding mac addresses to a DB so that it can be run from PXE etc is simple enough and is part of the auto-provision and install process.

The biggest issue, from what I can see, is getting a system in place that works the way you want it to. NocPS is 'okay' and lots of people use it but I've never really liked it. Ubersmith can work too but then you're spending a large chunk of money on a product that will be bloatware for a lot of companies. In the end I found an opensource piece of software that worked 80% of the time and had 70% of what I wanted. A bit of fiddling around later saw it operating more to how I like but there's still something missing.

Ultimately it comes down to what you can afford in time and money I guess!

OneClickKick is what you're referring to, correct?

 

[MartinD]

That is indeed it!

 

[Geekion]

i wish to know the method too

 

[farhanideas]

with the customization clients want - it's a crap shoot you can rely on auto provisioning to a large extent for more than rescue and reformat/rollbackup and restores of existing clients.    That said, if you run a ford-model-T approach (3 server model/configs only) a tool like Noc-PS or Linmin is fine - or just using your own pxe loaders automation is the way to go. 

I am agree with you

 

[LeaseVPS]

NOC-PS is an example of a software, foreman is another. 

Agreed , both NOC-PS and Foreman are the way to go, We have used both of them.


We currently use NOC-PS but I really liked the foreman, especially how easy it was to pass info from the order form into the pxe script or first boot script


I think there is a much larger community behind Foreman as it's also used to handoff to puppet or chef, from memory RHEL use to for their RDO (Openstack) deployments

 

[rds100]

Unfortunately the noc-ps guy doesn't like WHMCS (i could understand why). So he doesn't offer a working noc-ps module for WHMCS 6. Fortunately the older versions for WHMCS 5 are not that hard to modify to work with WHMCS 6.

 

[farhanideas]

Best way to to keep that dedicated server details which we have there in stock which help to deliver them as soon as possible

 

[web-project]

I do remember in the past the hostbillapp software can provision automatically the dedicated servers.

 

[HaBangNet]

Ubersmith got this feature, but cost will rather expensive

 

[web-project]

Ubersmith got this feature, but cost will rather expensive

I think the Ubersmith is most professional solutions compare to others.

 

[norival1992]

DCImanager is capable of managing infrastructure of any scale, from a few servers to all physical assets of the data center. You can administrate server equipment, keep track of inventory & parts, and check power consumption.

 

[Tyler]

Unfortunately the noc-ps guy doesn't like WHMCS (i could understand why). So he doesn't offer a working noc-ps module for WHMCS 6. Fortunately the older versions for WHMCS 5 are not that hard to modify to work with WHMCS 6.

Talk about the opportunity cost there. Almost every small to medium sized host is using WHMCS, and the dev put his own choices about disliking WHMCS over adding a module for it. His loss, I guess.

 

[UltratechHost]

DCIManager will be an another option but when comes to different payment gateway and other feature WHMCS is best.

 

[GS-Dylan]

I've been working with Easy-DCIM lately and have to say it's a pretty solid product, it can completely auto provision from ordering to os installation if you have it configured correctly, it has modules for NOC-ps and WHMCS making it easy. It's also great for using it as your Datacenter Inventory Mangement (DCIM). The one area I find lacking, but is improving, is the IPAM module. The lead developer Konrad is an awesome guy, I talk to him on skype regularly to provide feedback on how to make workflows easier, issues I've found, etc. He's very receptive to it and I've seen multiple features I've suggested get added in the next release. I would consider it still a "young" product but with that said I have very little issues with it's stability and performance and it's truly an all in one solution unlike any the dedicated server provisioning and management system the market has seen. It's also developed by the ModulesGarden so that will attest to the team behind it.

 

[TierNet]

Hmm automation.. not sure but most hosting companies have scripts created to speed up the installation process. The script will basically install everything required on the server and take care of configuration too.

 

[scv]

Centralized management is a must - machines should all be on their own VLAN, and you can forward DHCP off to your management server to choose the prefix from the database. DB driven DHCP makes the PXE boot option a lot easier for handling automated installs.

Another option is to interface with platform IPMI and keep a local SMB server around for image redirection, but that'd require different implementation for different vendors, or at least an abstraction layer to translate into vendor-specific function calls. Might be a bit easier than maintaining PXE-based kickstart/debootstrap installers though.

 

[MVPSNET]

PXE + kickstart all the way