>> why the big deal about cf-engine/salt/puppet/chef/etc? > > Well with xCAT (which we use) the big thing is node auto-discovery and > naming. If we physically replace a node we remove its MAC address from > xCAT and when we turn it on it boots into a discovery image, gets > named based on its switch port (via a system you define to it), > programs the BMC/IMM appropriately and then lights up its attention light. > > When we brought up our new Intel system recently we just plugged it > in, turned it on and waited for all the little blue lights to come on > to say it was appropriately configured. :-)
sure, I like auto-configuring clusters too, but do you need salt-like tools for this? the way I do it is that the pxe default boots into the discovery kernel, which in rc.local just probes MAC/IPMI/port and hands it to the admin node, which updates the DB and switches pxe to a normal node boot. > So we can have a library of osimage definitions and switch groups > between them. sure - we currently use onesis, which has groups/roles too, though it doesn't put the customization all on one spot, (still very obvious.) we don't actually try to configure all our stuff from one place, though (partly for historic and geographic reasons, I guess.) I'm not really sure we'd want *everthing* intertwingled, though - for instance the admin/compute/login part of a cluster is basically independent from the luster server nodes. maybe we're just not ambitious enough in our automation. _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
