Getting started

• Creating basic objects
• Investigating nodes
• Browsing other objects

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This page explains the most important commands for getting started. We assume that you have a Razor server up and running (if not, go to Installation)

Installing the command line client

The command line client is a small utility that makes interacting with the Razor server's REST API more convenient. As the server and the client only communicate over HTTP, there is no need to run the client on the same machine as the server, and running the client locally is generally preferrable.

The client requires that a Ruby is installed that is compatible with Ruby 1.9.3; compared to the Razor server, there is no need to run the client under jRuby, and using a Ruby interpreter with a faster startup time, like MRI Ruby is usually more convenient.

The client is distributed as a gem and can be installed with

gem install razor-client

and can be pointed at the Razor server either by speciying the server's API URL with the --url option, or by setting the RAZOR_API environment variable. The following two commands have the same effect and list all nodes on the server http://razor:8080/api:

razor --url http://razor:8080/api nodes

RAZOR_API=http://razor:8080/api razor nodes

## Creating basic objects

To use Razor, you will need to create a few basic objects on the server. Most importantly, you'll want to load at least one repo into the server and declare a broker:

razor create-repo --name=centos-6.4 --iso-url http://some.where/centos.iso

All the objects you use with Razor are identified by a name, which has to be unique (i.e., there can only be one repo called 'sles-11') The repo contains the actual bits that are used when installing a node; the instructions for installation are contained in recipes, and Razor comes with a few predefined recipes to get you started. They can be found in the recipes/ directory in the razor-server repo, and can all be used by simply mentioning their name in a policy as described below, including the vmware_esxi installer; the one exception to this is the Windows installer, which requires additional preparation.

Besides repos and recipes, you'll also need a broker; brokers are responsible for handing a node off to a config management system, usually Puppet. We'll set up a simple noop broker, that does nothing:

razor create-broker --name=noop --broker-type=noop

With that set up, we can create a policy. Policies tie all the other bits and pieces in Razor together, and are what gets ultimately applied to a host. Since a command line to create a policy would be quite a mouthful, we store the policy in a JSON file, say policy.json:

{
  "name": "centos-for-small",
  "repo": { "name": "centos-6.4" },
  "recipe": { "name": "centos" },
  "broker": { "name": "noop" },
  "enabled": true,
  "hostname": "host${id}.example.com",
  "root_password": "secret",
  "max_count": "20",
  "rule_number": "100",
  "tags": [{ "name": "small", "rule": ["<=", ["num", ["fact", "processorcount"]], 2]}]
}

and create it on the server:

razor create-policy --json policy.json

With that, the first 20 nodes with no more than two processors that boot will get the centos-for-small policy applied to them.

## Investigating what's on your server

Running razor nodes will produce a list of all the nodes that the Razor server knows about, and looks something like this:

    Id: "http://razor:8080/api/collections/nodes/5254000d97f0"
  Name: "5254000d97f0"
  Type: "/razor/v1/collections/nodes/member"

... more nodes ...

The name of the node is simply the MAC address of its interface (or those MAC addresses glommed together if the node has more than one interface). It can be used to get more information about the node via razor nodes 5254000d97f0

             Id: "http://razor:8080/api/collections/nodes/5254000d97f0"
           Name: "5254000d97f0"
           Type: "/razor/v1/collections/nodes/member"
          Hw_id: "5254000d97f0"
       Dhcp_mac: "01-52-54-00-0d-97-f0"
         Policy: ...
            Log: ...
          Facts:
                                       Id: "root"
                             Architecture: "x86_64"
                                   Kernel: "Linux"
                                   Domain: "localhost"
                               Macaddress: "52:54:00:0d:97:f0"
...

and razor nodes 5254000d97f0 log displays the log of that node:

      Event: "boot"
     Recipe: "microkernel"
   Template: "boot"
      Repo: "microkernel"
  Timestamp: 1377104696
   Severity: "info"

      Event: "bind"
     Policy: "fedora-for-any"
  Timestamp: 1377105312
   Severity: "info"

     Action: "reboot"
     Policy: "fedora-for-any"
  Timestamp: 1377105312
   Severity: "info"

      Event: "boot"
     Recipe: "redhat"
   Template: "boot_install"
       Repo: "fedora-19"
  Timestamp: 1377105319
   Severity: "info"

## Browsing other objects

For any of the collections that Razor supports, you can use razor COLLECTION to get a list of that collection, and razor COLLECTION NAME to get the details of an object in that collection. Running razor -h will list all the collections the server knows about.

As an example, razor tags lists all tags, and razor tags test shows the details of the tag with name test.