Satellite 6 - Creating New Hosts: Requiring MAC Address

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My apologies if this is documented elsewhere, but I have not found anything on this specific item.

I just installed Satellite 6.1 Beta and am going through configuring everything. I'm at the point where I wanted to provision a new host. In the process of creating a new host, there is a section on the Network tab that requires the MAC address of the host. This is confusing since the VM hasn't been created yet, so how would I know what the MAC address is when the system doesn't exist?

Hopefully, this is just something simple that I'm overlooking.

Thanks!!

DC
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PS Guru 6494 points
9 July 2015 11:51 AM

Dan,

I agree completely, the MAC address can be derived (easily) by Facter when Puppet first runs, so it seems to make little sense that you need to provide it for creation. I am assuming the MAC is used to identify the host from bare metal stage because you have 'Deploy On' set to 'Bare Metal'.

This requirement goes away if you hook your Satellite server up to a compute resource (I have added a vCenter host) because you can then choose different options under 'Deploy On', but it doesn't really solve the problem. I personally don't want Satellite to provision with VMware (or anything), I just want it to manage patching and Puppet config.

I think 'Deploy On' needs a 'No Deployment' option that winds back the required fields.

DC Pro 539 points
9 July 2015 4:52 PM

PixelDrivt,

To your point on the Deploy On, I was able to find out the same thing. Thanks!

Now, it seems to me that you're running into a catch-22. If your Compute Resource does not tie into vCenter (like, if you choose to Deploy On baremetal), you don't see any options to create a VM. But then you end up having to specify the MAC. :-) Of course, if Satellite is not creating the VM for you, you have to do that through vCenter (or whatever else you're using), so you should be able to find that MAC before you create the New Host in Satellite.

I'm assuming you just want to take an existing system, with your OS already installed, and then manage patching and Puppet configs with Satellite, yes? If so, I think there is something in the User Guide to register an existing host to Satellite. That way, you build your VM, install your OS and then register to Satellite and manage Puppet configs and all your patching from there.

For my environment, I'm still having issues with the build process as it does create the VM for me, but then I can't get an OS to install. I have TFTP set up on my Satellite server (and, yes, it's running). But it still just continues to look for a PXE server and then finds nothing ("Unable to locate configuration file"). I'll keep poking around as I'm thinking I'm likely just missing something relatively simple.

One annoying thing with this is that, even though the "New Host" was unsuccessful and it didn't create anything in Satellite, after I delete the VM from vCenter, I still can't use the same name for the next attempt at "New Host" because Satellite has this somewhere and claims that the name is in use, though I can't seem to find it anywhere. So, I'm having to continually increment the hostname, which means I have to keep updating my DNS record every time this fails.

Another concern with this is, since Satellite seems to store this host name somewhere, I don't like the idea that there is all this "junk" data in Satellite that will eventually gunk things up with so many useless records. This will also be an issue in the future when Satellite becomes a production environment. If a "New Host" fails and I can't use the naming convention that is standard in our environment, this will be come more than just annoying. Perhaps it's my OCD kicking in, but I don't like that idea that, if a New Host fails for whatever reason when this is in production, my initial host for a new server will end up being server03 rather than server01. That starts making me hyperventilate and break out in sores.

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