[et-mgmt-tools] Cluster Provisioning

[Ronald Valente]

Our labs are set to run PXE boot by default in the BIOS and that  
cannot change. Which is going to require some way to get the machines  
with the small local install. I agree that the OS should be installed  
on the machines but getting it there is the current issue. If the OS  
is run locally then we do not need anything like a distributed file  
system. This is because condor (the high performance computing app)  
that we are using handles all that. We just need a way to get the  
machines from there normal lab imaging environment to our modified  
provisioning environment.

Regards,
Ron Valente
On Jan 13, 2007, at 7:07 PM, Michael DeHaan wrote:

> Ronald Valente wrote:
>> Cobbler Community.
>>
>> I am currently working on an independent study to bring up a  
>> cluster every night and tear it down before the labs re-open in  
>> the morning. Here is a quick run down.
>>
>> The labs have PXE boot as the first option as the motherboard  
>> because the students use it to select which OS they need to use.
>>
>> The lab has 80 computers 40 on each subnet.
>>
>> Two head nodes one for each subnet.
>>
>> It would be nice to use cobble in conjunction with a distributed  
>> file system. Then each computer would boot via PXE on started,  
>> install the OS and store the files on a distributed file system.  
>> Then after the initial install sequence there would be no more  
>> boot time other than booting from the distributed file system. We  
>> are currently try Rocks clusters and its giving us more headaches  
>> then if we just rolled our own distro. The only requirement is  
>> that we run condor.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Ron Valente
>>
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> In general, cobbler supports anything kickstart can do, so this  
> might be an Anaconda question or one better suited for kickstart- 
> list at redhat.com ...
>
> Offhand, it seems like it would be easier to provision each box  
> with a minimal local OS every night (for  simplicity), and then  
> just have them mount the distributed filesystem as appropriate --  
> but then I'm really not a distributed filesystem expert.   Just the  
> base OS packages and whatever it takes to make the machine  
> manageable...
>
> If anyone else has any other ideas and comments, feel free to chime  
> in.
>
> --Michael