[gentoo-user] automated install || stage4? rapid deployment?

[James]

Folks,

I'm curious how other sysadmins rapidly deploy a slew of new Gentoo
systems? In this case I'm setting up many dozens of Gentoo servers
inside of VMware ESX and having to destroy and redeploy said systems
regularly.

The "hardware" (virtual, of course) varies ever so slightly, so
cloning (via ESX or dd) is not an option. I'm looking for a rapid
installation method similar to that of the Ubuntu server (just a few
steps in an ncurses-driven menu and everything is up in short order).
Or better yet, an automated Anaconda installation such as the one
available for Red Hat.

Gentoo is an absolute joy to use, so moving to another distribution
isn't an option. ;) I'm simply looking for a much simpler method in
automatically deploying / installing systems.

Some things I've looked at before:
- writing my own installation script (worked "okay" but I had to
update it and make changes to keep up with portage regularly)
- sought other automated / scripted installation methods
    - GLIS is ancient and I'm not sure it's being maintained (or if it
even works)
    - it seems others have tried and failed in creating a popular
installation method

I've thought about creating my own stage4 (manually) but it makes more
sense to somehow automate an installation method so that the "nightly"
stage3 builds that Gentoo distributes will be used. Otherwise my
stage4 will become "out of date" somewhat regularly.

Metro (drobbin's catalyst replacement) has piqued my interest and
seems *almost* right for the job. But Metro doesn't seem as though my
standard slew of configuration files (fstab, make.conf, etc.) can be
automatically placed inside of the stage{3,4} tarball during the
scripted generation of the stage3.

Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions?

-j