One central FOG server plus multiple Storage nodes in different locations possible?

[tesparza]

I’m trying to find out if my idea is possible. I work for a school district and Im gonna implement FOG. My question is if its possible to have the FOG server at a central office location and Storage nodes at each of the campuses (around 17 campuses) spread out in a city. We are all connected together using a telecommunication company routers.

Lets say I’m in at campus A with storage node A and I image, does the image travel all the way to central office Main FOG? or does the storage node A take care of it?

[george1421]

@tesparza Your idea will work fine. That is in line with how FOG was designed with a central (master) server and remote storage nodes.

Now there are a few caveats with this design.

1. The storage nodes need to be in contact with the central server 100% of the time.
2. Computers with the fog client installed must be able to talk to the central server continuously.
3. You can only capture images to the central server. The storage nodes are deploy only.

In addition to the storage nodes, you will need to install the fog location plugin. This way you can defined storage nodes to a location as well as computers to a location. That way during imaging the computer knows who to talk to.

During the pxe booting process the remote computer will download iPXE from the storage node, but then it needs to talk to the master node to find out where its storage node is location. Once FOS Linux (engine that clones the system) is up and running it will download the image for whatever storage node the computer is assigned to.

[Sebastian Roth]

@george1421 said in One central FOG server plus multiple Storage nodes in different locations possible?:

You can only capture images to the central server. The storage nodes are deploy only.

This is the most important point I think. From what @tesparza said so far it sounds as if image capture to storage nodes is wanted.

[tesparza]

@george1421 Sorry for the late reply I was AFK. So does the storage node hold any image or essentially is just like mirror?

[tesparza]

@sebastian-roth On the DHCP server what IP do I use for pxe boot. Master server or Storage node?

[george1421]

@tesparza said in One central FOG server plus multiple Storage nodes in different locations possible?:

So does the storage node hold any image or essentially is just like mirror?

A storage node contains a copy of all images on the master node, where the replicate checkbox is selected in the image definition.

[george1421]

@tesparza said in One central FOG server plus multiple Storage nodes in different locations possible?:

Master server or Storage node

It depends on the location. If you are pxe booting at the remote site then the slave at the remote site. This would be for dhcp option 66.

If at HQ then the HQ fog server.

Understand how this will work at the remote site. You will transfer iPXE boot loader from the local site, then iPXE will reach out to the master node to get the iPXE boot menu. Then when something in the iPXE boot menu is selected bzImage and init.xz will be loaded from the local (storage node) fog server.

[EduardoTSeoane]

@tesparza if my memory works well we had some little schools working on that way, with all the netboot jailed on local Network, except node data base queries from node to máster/data base, with a few of lesser changes on boot scripts. Foro fogclient need routing to máster…

[Wayne Workman]

@tesparza You may want to look through the location plugin documentation. Most of your questions I think will be answered by this and the video in there. https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=Location_Plugin

[tesparza]

@george1421 Okay, each storage node has their individual IP address. Thanks.

[tesparza]

@wayne-workman Yes thank you, video answer alot.