What if I want to install on a production system?

[Mike Benza]

I’ve noticed that the installation says I shouldn’t install FOG on a production machine because it installs a number of packages. I have a machine that I want to [I]add[/I] FOG too. Here’s what I’ve got:
[LIST]
[]Machine name: dcc
[LIST]
[]Apache 2, MySQL, DHCP, NAT with ~50 machines behind the NAT spread across 3 network interfaces on the private side, one on the public side.
[/LIST]
[]Machine name: dcgw-s1
[LIST]
[]DHCP, NAT with 15 worker machines behind a NAT (one public, one private interface)
[]Separate subnet from dcc
[/LIST]
[]Machine name: dcgw-s2
[LIST]
[]Same as dcgw-s1
[]Same subnet as dcgw-s1
[/LIST]
[*]Soon to be: dcgw-s3, dcgw-s4, dcgw-s5 (separate or same subnet as dcgw-s1)
[/LIST]
DCC is not something that we want to rebuild from scratch, but it also the machine that should probably have FOG on it, as the central coordinator for this little distributed cluster (the last C is for coordinator). It also runs the application that we use for managing all the workers and distributed jobs to those workers. We’re going to tie different images to different jobs, so we almost definitely want FOG on DCC.

There are some things we want:
[LIST]
[]Use an existing user (we already have a user for running apps like FOG’s)
[]Use existing installations and configurations for for MySQL, Apache, DHCP
[/LIST]
Is this possible? Or should I just start tearing apart the installation script and cobbling it back together?

[BryceZ]

Unfortunately there is no scripted way to merge FOG into your environment. If you’re not comfortable with ripping apart open source software like this, knowing that you’ll have a harder time when it comes to troubleshooting, then I’d say you need to rethink your approach to FOG. A standalone FOG server is definitely the easiest to setup.

If you really [I]really REALLY [/I]want to merge FOG into your already existing infrastructure then I’d suggest installing FOG on a separate machine and pulling the pieces into your setup one at a time (unless you really like hacking away at installation scripts).

[Matt Harding]

Another idea would be to run Fog under virtualbox on the dcc machine. I’d recommend having at least 4gig ram spare on the machine if you choose to do this though.

[LibraryMark]

We have run Fog on a virtualbox vm from the first time we used it. Had no troubles at all. It’s been rock-solid. Way easier than setting up a separate box if you already have some sort of VM infrastructure in place. Performance has been fast enough for us.