QA Infra from scratch

To set-up the QA system from scratch needs a *lot* of time and familiarity with CI tools. Tools like Cobbler have been chosen for this purpose so that tasks like PXE server set-up, and Puppet interaction, is made easier. The steps involved to set-up a system for scratch would be :

1. Create a QACloud VM on XenServer host
2. Configure private network switch with VLANs etc.
3. Install the following on QACloud
   1. Cobbler
   2. Puppet
   3. DNSMASQ
   4. ipmitool
   5. Squid
   6. NFS server
4. Import Hypervisor images (XenServer, KVM, ESXi) into Cobbler
   1. (TODO - Insert instructions to import here. They are tricky)
5. Import Management Server OS into Cobbler (CentOs etc.)
6. Configure MAC address for baremetal hosts in Cobbler for PXE provisioning
7. Configure DNSMASQ for the above MAC addresses
   1. Use this sample config
8. Set-up Puppet master to enable provisioning services like mysql etc. on management server VM in an automated way.
   1. Use this sample config
   2. Use puppet recipies from here
9. Set-up NFS server for secondary storage
10. Seed systemVM templates on NFS
11. Set-up Squid HTTP Proxy server. This is required since QACloud  is the only one expected to have public internet link. All other hosts live on a completely isolated network which is dedicated for testing. However, tasks like yum package download may need internet access, and thus the proxy server.
12. Add QACloud to Jenkins master by providing IP address, login and password.
13. (OPTIONALLY) add Windows VM to host vCenter, and manage a ESXi host running NetScalar, SRX etc.