Multiple images for one host

[Wayne Workman]

@ITSolutions I managed a classroom like this in College, we had removable HDD bays. Students got assigned HDDs for the semester, they stayed in the labs with their name on it. Removable bays are quite cheap.

[ITSolutions]

@Wayne-Workman Yeah, I had classes like that too. But it all depends on what is needed. I can see merits to both ways of doing it. With some of the labs today though I have been seeing the micro desktops, so removable trays may not be an option any longer. Plus you have a higher risk of HDD failure with the removable trays, due tot he moving of them.

[Wayne Workman]

@ITSolutions You could also just use external USB hdds, boot to those. You could run an installation of linux from a 8GB flash drive.

[ITSolutions]

@Wayne-Workman True, I get that. I am just hopefully clarifying what the OP seems to be asking for. Like I said I can see merits in both ways of doing things.

[george1421]

@ITSolutions Just pondering this a bit (using your workflow concept), I think the reimage on schedule could be done on the sql database side since FOG doesn’t support this out of the box.

based on a cron job a sql stored procedure could be called to find all hosts in group X. Once a know list of devices have been created then we can reassign all host to image A in sql. Then the stored procedure would create a deployment task for each computer in that group. In theory you would have one procedure that takes 1 variable to do image A or B. Cron could be scheduled to run this procedure multiple times per day if needed.

[robin]

@Tom-Elliott Sorry, I am using FOG 1.2 on a Debian 8

@ITSolutions That is my problem, I need differents OS / Softwares / Configuration on the same computer but at different times for training purposes, let’s say 1 week students will worked on Windows 7 on a specific software with a clean database. Then next week Windows XP on another software, etc… So when student comes, the teacher will “just” have to launch the deployement task.

@george1421 I need to have the people that will teach classes able to launch the deployement task themself, they need to be as much as possible autonomous when then want to do their classes. They are not IT people, so I have to configure everything beforehand. They will be the ones that choose which images they need.
Then It would be possible but from the database side… Would it be easy to do this ? Then the Cron will do everything depending of variables that will determine which images deploy. Interesting.

@Wayne-Workman The thing is I have NO budget, even for HDD, that’s why I want to switch from Acronis to a free solution. Plus, for each training the computers needs to be clean of every configuration made by students during the previous class (so, re-imaging…)

[george1421]

@robin said in Multiple images for one host:

@george1421 I need to have the people that will teach classes able to launch the deployement task themself, they need to be as much as possible autonomous when then want to do their classes. They are not IT people, so I have to configure everything beforehand. They will be the ones that choose which images they need.
Then It would be possible but from the database side… Would it be easy to do this ? Then the Cron will do everything depending of variables that will determine which images deploy. Interesting.

So we are not talking about an hourly change, that is good. If the teachers want to visit each machine, they can always select quick image from the iPXE menu. In quick image it gives the user an option to select whatever image they want to deploy to the target computer. This can be the same image that is defined by default or a different one. Then you can leave the default defined image as what ever you want for your base image. The teachers can go into the console and reset all systems in group X back to their default image.

[Tom Elliott]

@george1421 the image selection on quick image is only in trunk/rc fog not 1.2.0.

[Wayne Workman]

@robin You could setup DeepFreeze or SmartShield, and just dual-boot whatever OSs you need. That’s another option.

A cron script could do what you want, easily.

[george1421]

@Wayne-Workman OR, some carefully crafted php pages to call the mysql stored procedure. These pages would be hosted in just some other apache path than /fog.

But using quick image in 1.3.0-rc1 would be a consistent solution and not have to build something special. If quick image is not usable in this situation then someone with php skills could create a simple page to call this yet non-existent mysql stored procedure.

[robin]

@george1421 I’ll try with the Quick Image first and if it does not work I’ll look with this methode more deeply.

@Wayne-Workman I keep these solutions in mind if Quick Image is not for me.

@Tom-Elliott Ok, I will upgrade the server to try this.

Thank you all for you replies !