Windows server as FOG Storage Node - proof of concept blog

[george1421]

Tom added some new code checks (30-Mar-16) that will have FOG revert back to the 1.2.0 way of checking for images if the storage node doesn’t respond properly to the http query. This opens the door again to proving if a windows storage node is possible.

[Tom Elliott]

@george1421 just a slight correction. It is not using 1.2.0 method of checking. That is way gone and the new method is faster and simpler. Each node is aware of the images they have available to them now where 1.2.0 just checked if it existed on the node it was to pull from. This would cause problems in 1.2.0 because the master was checked at task creation. The client would load up all the way and then if it was pointed at a node that didn’t have the image would fail quite dramatically. Now boot will only boot to a node that has the image on it.

[Wayne Workman]

#wiki worthy

[george1421]

Part 1b

Here is a rough outline on how to do this same thing with Windows 2008 R2. I hope to be able to test this as soon as I get my test environment rebuilt.

The following executed correctly on Windows 2008 R2 with Windows Managment Framework installed which installs PowerShell 3.0 I’m actually not using very many powershell commands here, basically just to add windows roles and features. Powershell on Windows 2008 is a bit lacking as compared to 2012.

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Scope CurrentUser
Import-Module ServerManager

Add-WindowsFeature FS-FileServer
Add-WindowsFeature FS-NFS-Services

mkdir c:\share
mkdir c:\share\tftpboot
mkdir c:\share\images
mkdir c:\share\snapins
mkdir c:\share\snapins\ssl

net localgroup fog_users /add
net user fog_user "mi5ty_cl0ud" /add /EXPIRES:NEVER /PASSWORDCHG:NO /active:YES /Y
net localgroup fog_users fog_user /add
icacls c:\share /grant "fog_users:M"

*****

nfsshare images=c:\share\images -o rw sec=sys root unmapped=yes
netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Server for NFS" new enable=Yes

*************

On FOG server
mount -t nfs 192.168.1.205:/images /mnt
mkdir /mnt/dev
touch /mnt/.mntcheck
touch /mnt/dev/.mntcheck
umount /mnt

****************

# On windows server
Add-WindowsFeature Web-WebServer,Web-Common-Http,Web-FTP-Server,Web-FTP-Service,Web-FTP-Ext,Web-Mgmt-Console

Import-Module WebAdministration
New-WebFtpSite -Name "FOGFtpSite" -Port 21 -PhysicalPath "c:\share" -IPAddress "192.168.1.205" 

Set-ItemProperty "IIS:\Sites\FOGFtpSite" -Name ftpServer.security.ssl.controlChannelPolicy -Value 0
Set-ItemProperty "IIS:\Sites\FOGFtpSite" -Name ftpServer.security.ssl.dataChannelPolicy -Value 0
Set-ItemProperty "IIS:\Sites\FOGFtpSite" -Name ftpServer.security.authentication.basicAuthentication.enabled -Value $true
Set-ItemProperty "IIS:\Sites\FOGFtpSite" -Name ftpserver.userisolation.mode -Value 4
Add-WebConfiguration "/system.ftpServer/security/authorization" -value @{accessType="Allow";roles="fog_users";permissions="Read,Write";users=""} -PSPath IIS:\ -location "FOGFtpSite"
Restart-WebItem "IIS:\Sites\FOGFtpSite"

*********************************

New-Item "IIS:\Sites\Default Web Site\fog" -type Directory
New-Item "IIS:\Sites\Default Web Site\fog\service" -type Directory
New-Item "IIS:\Sites\Default Web Site\fog\service\ipxe" -type Directory

********************************

In IIS management for the default web site must update mime types to add “.*” (dot star without the quotes) and with a type of “application/octet-stream”

********************************

#Now that IIS is all setup and ready you will need to copy all of the files from /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe to the IIS server in the windows path IIS:\Sites\Default Web Site\fog\services\ipxe
#Lets do this with nfs. Create the NFS share on the Windows server

nfsshare fogipxe=C:\inetpub\wwwroot\fog\service\ipxe -o rw sec=sys root unmapped=yes

****************

On FOG server
mount -t nfs 192.168.1.205:/fogipxe /mnt
cp /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/* /mnt
umount /mnt

****************

# On Windows server, remove the nfs share
nfsshare fogipxe /delete

(Note: you need to "replace all child objects permission with inheritable permissions from this object" on C:\inetpub\wwwroot\fog\service\ipxe or the bg download test will fail
# need to figure out the icacls command on this one

Install the TFTP service as outlined in the OP

[george1421]

Part 2

For the remainder of this thread I’ll continue with the Windows 2008 R2 server as the windows storage node. If time permits I’ll circle back and attempt the same thing with 2012, but based on what I’ve done so far I have confidence that 2012 will work equally as well as 2008.

There is one bit of error data I found running through a QC check before moving onto the next part. I created the FTP site using the powershell command: New-WebFtpSite -Name "FOGFtpSite" -Port 21 -PhysicalPath "c:\share" -IPAddress "192.168.1.205" While testing I found that the -PhysicalPath switch did not update the ftp server setting causing the ftp server to report that the home folder could not be located. I went into the mmc console for IIS and manually set the homedrive for the ftp server. Once that was done I was able to login via FTP.

On to the QC checks before moving on to the FOG setup of this. For these tests we’ll use a windows 7 workstation.

First we need to test to see if the FTP server is working and we can login using the fog_user account we setup.

C:\>ftp 192.168.1.205
Connected to 192.168.1.205.
220 Microsoft FTP Service
User (192.168.1.205:(none)): fog_user
331 Password required for fog_user.
Password:
230 User logged in.

Just issue a dir command to see if we can see the files we created.

ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful.
125 Data connection already open; Transfer starting.
05-22-16  08:39PM       <DIR>          images
05-22-16  07:41PM       <DIR>          snapins
05-24-16  02:42PM       <DIR>          tftpboot
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 144 bytes received in 0.00Seconds 144000.00Kbytes/sec.
quit

That completes the FTP test

The next step is to test the tftp server

C:\>tftp 192.168.1.205 get default.ipxe
Transfer successful: 427 bytes in 1 second, 427 bytes/s

If your tests matches the above then we can move onto the FOG part of the setup.

My dev environment was created fresh with the latest trunk version of FOG 1.2.0. The following is the complete steps I went through to setup FOG to communicate with the windows storage node.

Fog Configuration -> Plugin System
FOG_PLUGINSYS_ENABLED = checked

Plugin Managment
Activate and install Location management plugin

Storage Management -> Add Storage node
Name: WinStoreNode
IP Address: 192.168.1.205
Web Root: /fog
Max Clients: 10
Is Master Node: (unchecked)
Replication Bandwidth: 0
Storage Group: default
Image Path: /images
FTP Path: /images
Snapin Path: /snapins
SSL Path: /snapins/ssl
Bitrate: (blank)
Interface: eth0
Is Enabled: (checked)
Is Graph enabled: (unchecked)
Managment Username: fog_user
Managment Password: mi5ty_cl0ud

Location Managment -> Create New Location
Location Name: winsn
Storage Group: Default
Storage Node: WinStoreNode
Use inits and kernels from this node: (checked)
Press the Add button

I next copied a host image from my production server to the dev environment. Once all of the files were in place, I went back to the FOG GUI and added an Image reference that defined the image I copied over from my production server.

And finally I restarted the FOGImageReplication service. Inspecting the /opt/fog/log directory you should see the replication service start up with a transfer log specifically for the windows storage node we just created (i.e. fogreplicator.log.transfer.WinStoreNode.log). If you see this long file, hop over to your windows storage node and inspect the directory c:\share\images to see if the image files have started to copy over from the FOG server.

[george1421]

Part 3 (Final)

Today I went in and registered one of my VMs on the dev fog server. I ran through the full registration and allocated this host to the “winsn” location.

I pxe booted the vm and saw that it initially connected to the dev fog server and then the dev fog server redirected the client to pull the bzImage and init.xz from the Windows storage node (!!getting excited level 20% !!).

The vm downloaded both bzImage and the init from the windows storage node cleanly (excitement level 50%).

I saw the FOS kernel boot and started the initial prep work for imaging (excitement level 80%).

Partclone did its prep work and started downloading the image (excitement level 90%). I quickly checked the windows storage node and ran netstat -an and this was the the line I was searching for

TCP    192.168.1.205:2049     192.168.1.6:747      ESTABLISHED

This told me that the windows storage node was communicating with an external (dhcp) device over the NFS protocol!!

Imaging completed and the workstation started booting windows (time for a smoke and a beer) [full disclosure I don’t smoke so I’ll just take two beers instead].

So it IS possible to setup a FOG / MS Windows Storage node. In the end I’m still not seeing the value in it, but it IS DOABLE.

!!Success!! and the end of this POC project…

[Wayne Workman]

@george1421 you never cease to amaze.

[george1421]

@Wayne-Workman

Right now this post is a jumbled up mess. I’m going to break down my POC environment and build it again. I’ll verify the settings are correct and post a concise kb one for 2008 and one for 2012. But in theory it does work.

[vkenny]

@george1421 Where is “Location Management” is that relating to an older version of FOG that no longer has this or am I completely missing something?

[Tom Elliott]

@vkenny Location Management comes from a Plugin that’s known as the “Location Plugin”.

To install the Location Plugin first goto:

FOG Configuration Page->FOG Settings->Plugin Settings->FOG_PLUGIN_ENABLE
Check the box, press save. You’ll see a new menu item appear in the Main menu system. Click on this new menu item.

You will be presented with a list of plugins.
Click “Location” icon
Click “Activate Plugins”
Click “Location” icon
Click “Install plugin”

You will see the new Location menu item appear in your menu.

[george1421]

@Tom-Elliott I’m currently spinning up a new FOG 1.4.0 server to test multicasting across subnets (and usb FOS booting it now appears). I’ll divert that setup to test FOG with a windows 2012 server setup as a storage node. I don’t have a centos template on this dev box so its going to take me some time to get up to speed. I do have a windows 2012 template so that one shouldn’t take too long.

I would still expect it to take until this evening before I can get to testing with my day job and everything…