Sure, ansible seems to be the way to go and there is a lot of info widely available for that. It even sounds like ansible can be used to manage windows servers.
I was more interested in first-hand experience from anyone in this thread. Like I said above... I am mostly interested in "FLEXIBILITY" to mine whatever I want to mine.
Sometimes that means mining under Windows and sometimes that means mining under Linux. Given the equipment I have, it looks like I would be looking to build 4 dual-boot (Linux/windows) systems and then managing them all through ansible.
If anyone has specific links to info on similar setups, it would be great. I've seen some configuration guides so far but I'm looking more to see what the comprehensive setup and final product looks like for managing something like this.
For anyone interested in my server-mining virgin perspective... I finally have experience. I didn't end up using ansible... at all. Maybe I'm missing out but what I'm doing seems to have worked just fine. It's easier than I expected.
So my experience went like this:
1. ordered the server (4-node, 128 core Opteron 6376) and set it up on a test bench (my bedroom/office/computer desk table extension).
2. From there I installed Win 10 Pro followed by Linux for a dual boot configuration. I can easily remote into linux and send commands to all four nodes using Xshell. For windows, any remote access is fine... teamviewer, google remote desktop, Microsoft RDP, etc... Dual boot configuration is also very easy. Default bootup goes to the Linux boot grub. From Linux I can tell it to boot to Windows. When I reboot out of windows it just goes back to Linux. All so easy.
3. Tested various algo mining to see power consumption. Maxed it out and was just over 1300 watts. For my current infrastructure... this is about as much as I can handle unless I upgrade power. I didn't get to measure algorithms that used around 50% of CPU resources but I estimate consumption would be around 900 watts for that. I'm not really happy about the extra power but I am glad to have the extra CPU power as well as learn more about servers.
4. ordered a TP-link 8-port managed switch and power-line Ethernet adapters. Tested these on various circuits and they all worked. Home was built in 2004 so fairly new-ish construction/wiring which I've heard helps. I've also heard folks having problems on linking across circuits but I didn't have this problem.
5. From there I just moved everything into my mining cave which is now nice and warm. Really looking forward to the winter! lol.. Oh and the server CPUs stay nice and cool (as far as my limited experience tells me) That is, CPU temps around 52C ... But boy does it blow out some heat! it's right under where my dog sleeps so I bet my dog is enjoying it at night hehe
So yeah, got me some first hand experience and greatly enhanced my CPU-only algo flexibility which was my main goal in all this.
Thank you for this thread. This thread was the genesis of motivation to arrive at this implementation.