Machine Replication

Andresen,Jason R. JANDRESE at mitre.org
Thu Jul 21 21:08:27 GMT 2005


>From: owner-freebsd-stable at freebsd.org 
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-stable at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Eli K. Breen
>Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 3:21 PM
>To: freebsd-stable at freebsd.org
>Subject: Machine Replication
>
>All,
>
>Does anyone have a good handle on how to replicate (read: image) a 
>freebsd machine from one machine to an ostensibly similar machine?
>
>So far I've used countless variations and combinations of the 
>following:
>
>dd		(Slow, not usefull if the hardware isn't identical?)
>tar		(Doesn't replicate MBR)
>rsync		(No MBR support)
>Norton Ghost 	(Doesn't support UFS/UFS2?)
>G4U		(little experience with this)

If you need stuff replicated fast and you don't mind a bit of setup,
there is emulab http://www.emulab.net/.  I can push out new images to
machines in less than 10 minutes including the time it takes to reboot
twice (once into the imager and once back to the OS).  

You may need to use UFS1 for your filesystems though, I don't know if
the imager can handle UFS2 yet.  We use UFS1 here just to be safe.  


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