Automated rapid deployment in modern data-centers

How comes that the deployment of a new server takes so much time ? From the moment the user sends its request for a new server to the system-administrator up to the final installed system it often takes some days up to several months.

Fully automated provisioning of servers, detecting and deploying new systems on-the-fly, supporting multiple system architectures and different types of operation systems, optional switching from physical to virtual-systems using several, different virtualization technologies, fast-cloning of server-templates (“golden-images”) via storage-integration and rapidly deploying them to available systems plus taking care of automatic de-provisioning the unused resources or to move the underutilized services to virtual-machines, all that is where openQRM can help todays system-administrators in modern data-centers.

The storage-integration with NetApp-filers and via LVM2 enables one to create new file system images within seconds by cloning existing server-templates. Those file system images are immediately available for provisioning using different deployment methods, e.g. local-disk, NFS, soft- and hardware Iscsi, Aoe/Coraid, to either physical hardware or virtual partitions.

openQRM provides a single user-interface for the complete data-center which can be easily enhanced and tailored to any custom needs by plug-ins which are hooking into the plug-in API of the main server. Automatically, its logical abstraction of servers and services takes care of system-wide monitoring, administration and high-availability of all systems available in the data-center. The unique automated-provisioning features combined with its powerful and “plug-able” system management capabilities including, e.g. enhanced monitoring via Nagios, automated Vlan- and Ip-Administration, LDAP-authentication, Virtualization and multi-architecture support, makes this platform an essential tool for modern data-centers.

This presentation deals with improving the common scenario of “slow deployment” in modern data-centers and how to turn to an automated, flexible and scalable infra-structure managed by openQRM. It gives an overview of a typical reference-installation and points out details about the system-management and deployment features of openQRM.