New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Baremetal automation?
PulsedMedia
Member, Patron Provider
in Providers
There must be common solutions to join up WHMCS and have bare metal automation for selling dedicateds - but i've not seen any good options myself.
What are you guys using? Or does everyone make their own solutions?
Planning to test out Ubuntu MaaS soon as we will have both VMs and baremetal and using same templates and as close to same stuff for both would make most sense. Proxmox probably for the VM backend, and doing installs via PXE for both VMs and baremetal alike.
Comments
SynergyCP, DCIManager, EasyDCIM, NOC-PS. That's what most people use that isn't super expensive.
I've used NOC-PS but it has been many years now, at this point I think I'd be more inclined to use EasyDCIM.
I looked at NOC-PS long time ago - by what i gathered it offered quite minimal help, nothing i could not code quickly myself as well.
We've built something in-house that ties in inventory management, auto deploy and integrates with our billing system (which not WHMCS). If you're looking for something out of the box, you'll want one of the previously mentioned solutions.
Go with NOC-PS
ok will take a look again on NOC-PS as well. No Ubuntu MaaS users here?
NOC-PS with the awesome deploymentcode module or SynergyCP.
I've setup that for several companies.
What do you mean with that? 3rd party addon for noc-ps?
For WHMCS to work with NOC-PS since the original WHMCS module is no longer available or working properly.
https://deploymentcode.com/noc-ps-whmcs/overview/
I use MAAS for most of my backend and love it! I mainly use it for backend management and made a custom solution for client front end that is very simple and works great.
Tried DCIManager 6 and EasyDCIM and disliked both. Honestly not sure how providers get a way with using them without any issues. I tried working with my POCs a lot to make both products a bit better but unfortunately that didn't go anywhere. Most of the responses I got back were along the lines of, and I am paraphrasing here: "We will do it If enough providers request it" for something as simple as allowing custom ISO uploads.
I find it very hard to believe that not enough providers requested ISO uploads!
I can go on and on but you get the idea
TL:DR Both are not recommended especially if you have a variety of different server models with different specs and different iDrac/iLO/IPMI versions.
We have big variety, some do not even have any remote management but needs custom code for reboots. Optimally would use same system for VMs as well to avoid doing the same work twice
We've had custom PXE booting system with iSCSI targets in the past, but it was staticly defined and meant to have just nodes starting from network storage only. Actually bigger issue was lacklustre FOSS iSCSI server software, and the SAN for that experiment did not have enough redundancy and we got hit with the ST3000D00M - so that experiment ended there with 40%+ of drives failing in the span of 3-4months.
We did not offer new dedis for many many years in quantities, so our simple USB boot stick + custom coded installers were more than adequate as we would be on-site regardless if a system needed OS reinstall, and it was always the same image on same kind of hardware and part of the HW qualification process, the installation took just few minutes on the side while testing the hw.
https://deploymentcode.com/noc-ps-whmcs/overview/
Interesting, i will have a look at that as well
Is that easy to customize for custom solutions?
NOC-PS has progressed a bit since i last checked, and now supports proxmox as well interestingly!
Time to try it again it seems
https://deploymentcode.com/noc-ps-whmcs/overview/
Engrish and encrypted makes me a bit wary of this - what kind of issues you've had with it and are you running numbers in the hundreds?
I also use this module since ~2 years. Very responsive support, no problems (~200 servers).
We've been using SynergyCP, but it definitely has it's limitations, and the development cycle is quite slow.
My next project might be creating a control panel for dcim. Been wanting to integrate dcim in to GameDash as well...
I tested out https://theforeman.org/ before, it seemed to work fine with bare metal. But I didn't have everything set up, it was just in a test VM.
I did not face many issues. One of the features they implemented for a provider I work for was the IPMI KVM Proxy.
finally took the time to configure noc-ps with debian raid as we have a bunch of unused servers right now!
Just took a year to find the right moment 
Phew! What a load of work to get preseed correctly tuned for the setup we want and it get it quite exact. I was so tempted to just use the same method we've used for past idk know how many years.
The almost complete lack of documentation from noc-ps was no help neither, i had to reverse engineer most stuff. Fortunately, their support was quite responsive.
Tried also easydcim -- way too much, and it's installer modules did not seem to work. just too much clutter.
SynergyCP was a no go when even their site signup links were broken
Next up, integrate with WHMCS.
Sadly Deploymentcode stopped offering the 800$ opensource option i was counting on
We use DCImanager within long time (7 years now). It is software to work with baremetal server's. For virtual server's based on KVM or LXD virtualisation you may use VMmanager. Here is link for documentation:
DCImanager https://docs.ispsystem.com/dcimanager/integrations/integration-with-whmcs
VMmanager https://docs.ispsystem.com/vmmanager-admin/integration/integration-with-whmcs
Both panel work with genuine repo of related O/S and in realitime (except only Microsoft Windows where distribution images is used).
Cannot say how they work with WHCMS but with same developer product: Billmanager (it is billing software) both panel work very well.
DCI Manager is not too great. Many many issues especially with version 6.
That is why we stick with version 5 yet. I could say that when we switch from 4 to 5 we also has some issues. Not catastrophic but annoyance some time. Then, after enough number of iteration version 5 begin work smoothly. Patch for security and issues issued on regular base so just stick with version 5 till to time when build 6 will work on same way. Unfortunately, this is way preffered by many software develop - switch to new version/build before new product is complete. That is real life, sorry.
Most large companies design a PXE auto installer in house. The choices listed above are a start, but most are crap and very outdated. Onapp is another that can do PXE installing too, but the costs were too high.
All the above solutions suck at handling that asset management side. While they may handle a website 'standard build' ok. When it comes to custom dedicated servers w/ upgrades nothing works well at all.
Those needs also depend on the company.
For us something like noc-ps has just enough inventory management, as most of our builds are very standardized and goes for shared services anyways.