Automation of cloud node installation for testing and scalable provisioning

Abstract

Motivated by the lack of automated provisioning and testing tools for physical systems in modern cloud infrastructures, we developed a toolset to automate the installation of a commercial platform virtualization software: the IBM PowerVM NovaLink software. This toolset automates numerous manual installation steps and post-installation tests. The toolset uses Python programs to prepare the target system and to generate installation-configuration files through interaction with a web-interface of the POWER firmware. Expect scripts are used to drive the rest of the installation via interactions through a remote text console. With different scenarios of applying this automation toolset, we demonstrate its use in driving regression testing for the development of the NovaLink installer in a DevOps environment. Furthermore, we discuss its use in provisioning a large number of IBM POWER systems to be ready for cloud management software.