Walid wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Walid* <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>>
Date: Aug 30, 2007 9:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Configuration change monitoring
To: "Robert G. Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>>
Hi Robert
On 8/30/07, *Robert G. Brown * <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
To amplify Mark's remark a bit -- linux in general already has many
fairly powerful tools for DOING monitoring, updates, and so on. For
example, one can use e.g. yum, kickstart, apt, and more to install a
"canned" node configuration and keep it up to date. It is so totally
automatic that there is basically no need to "check for inconsistencies"
on a node. Warewulf and several other tools also permit one to have
rigorous control over node configuration.
Some of the inconsistencies we see is usually when one of the admin
choses the easy routes, and does changes manually to a set of nodes, and
does not update the installation files (our installations are rpm
kickstart based), others are becuase we manage quite a large variants
and by mistake or intention configurations files that are not supposed
to be on cluster A appears on Cluster B.
Monitoring tools abound, of course, ranging from things like syslog-ng
for centralized monitoring/logging of LAN systems activity to nightly
... ...
Is there something else one needs to do? Well, most cluster admins tend
to be fairly skilled linux administrators and good at shell script magic
or even real programming. So if one has an edge-case need that isn't
directly met by one of the available tools, it is usually a fairly
simple matter to hack out a script to accomplish it.
That is one reason why they want to push some commercial tools, They
want to minimize the amount of customizations that are done locally by
the team, as some writes in bash, another writes in Perl, and the other
prefers Python, in the long run there is an issue of maintaining the
scripts, and knowing which set of scripts belongs to which cluster, and
what kind of modifications are needed for new clusters,.etc all of which
is documented, but that is another story
More than likely you'll end up with commercial "solutions" that preclude
a rapid response to a problem and take your system down. A good admin
team communicates and you don't see confusion at the level you are
describing.
gerry
--
Gerry Creager -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.862.3982 FAX: 979.862.3983
Office: 1700 Research Parkway Ste 160, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843
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