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We're looking at MaaS for our bare metal server environment to replace old school kickstart scripts. MaaS works great if you want to go with the full "reimage everything" train. However, we have many machines where we don't have the time (or it's extremely disruptive) to re-image... in order to "cut over" to MaaS.

In short: Is it possible to add a machine to MaaS in such a way that it allows said machine to boot as normally, like it does with machines that are re-imaged? I understand that there is testing and inventory collection steps in MaaS, which is perfectly ok. I just can't re-image thousands of machines just to use MaaS.

Jon
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  • I guess it's not good idea to enroll any bare metal server without re-imaging reason is things may changed when it's used, it's possible to enroll but whoever using same bare metal server may face issues with application/automation/network etc. You should use clean bare metal server for production. – asktyagi Mar 28 '20 at 05:10
  • Perhaps the machine was re-imaged a few weeks ago and is running a critical workload, like MySQL There is no need to re-image it and it'd be extremely disruptive to do so. Regardless, the question is CAN it be done, not should it be done. – Jon Mar 28 '20 at 16:40

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Rather than adding a machine as normal and somehow skipping the imaging, the answer is to add the server in question as a "device". When you add a device to MaaS (with it's MAC/IP), then MaaS just skips any sort of PXE boot manipulation for that machine.

Later you can delete the device, reboot the server again, and allow it to goto imaging inventory/imaging as normal.

Jon
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