RHEL9 Foreman Guide

• In this Guide i will show you how to install Forman with puppet, katello and discovery plugin.
• You will also learn how to install and setup DHCP- and TFTP-Server.
• I will also show you how to setup Foreman and how to use the Foreman Boot Image via PXE.
• You will be ready to discover and provision your physical servers and workstations after following this Guide.

1. Knowledge Base

• here we explain:
  • how tftp and dhcp works
  • how the pxe boot process works
  • how the foreman smartproxy works
  • Lifecycle Management
    • what is it?
    • puppet & katello roles

2. Install Foreman (with katello, discovery-plugin, and local dhcp/tftp)

• just the installation process

3. Discovery and Provisioning

• we discover our host using the Boot Image
• we set up Hostgroups, subnets, etc
• we finally provision our discovered host

4. install and setup libvirt in Foreman

• we install libvirt
• we setup libvirt as compute resource
• boot intoo container/vm

5. Proxmox

• we install proxmox inside a vm using kvm&libvirt
• we setup proxmox as a compute resource

6. Install Foreman with external DHCP & DNS

• we install foreman inside a nested VM
• we set up our DHCP & DNS for Dynamic Updates using RNDC
• we configure our DHCP to share its leases using omapi(HMAC-MD5) key and NFS
• we configure Foreman to manage our external DNS by importing the RNDC key
• we configure Foreman to manage our external DHCP by using remote-isc-key flag and our omapi key

7. diskless pxe-boot using zfs (under construction)

• we create a zfs tank inside proxmox
• we create a wm inside proxmox and move the storage to our zfs tank (optional)
• we create a automatic backup-plan for the wm (optional)
• we create a pxe template inside foreman to pxe-boot diskless using the zfs tank storage

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Roadmap

• libvirt ✓
• proxmox ✓
• diskless boot using zfs (incl. repo storage) and custom pxe/grub preset ✓
• lifecycle management with puppet and katello
• cicd with ansible, terraform and packer
• salt, k8s and kubevirt

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the original version of the guide can be found here: original

• I decided to group the tutorials, rather than creating a huuuuge file.

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