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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>Good day to the group. I would like
to make a brief introduction to myself and raise my first question to the
forum.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>My name is Steve Herborn and I am a new
employee at the United States Naval Academy in the Advanced Research Computing
group which supports the IT systems used for faculty research. Part of my
responsibilities will be the care & feeding of our Beowulf Cluster which is
a commercially procured Cluster from Aspen Systems. It purchased &
installed about four or five years ago. As delivered the system was originally
configured with two Head nodes each with 32 compute nodes. One head node was
running SUSE 9.x and the other Head Node was running <em><i><font
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-style:normal'>Scyld (version unknown) also
with 32 compute nodes. While I don’t know all of the history,
apparently this system was not very actively maintain and had numerous hardware
& software issues, to include losing the array on which Scyld was installed.
</span></font></i></em>Prior to my arrival a decision was made to reconfigure
the system from having two different head nodes running two different OS Distributions
to one Head Node controlling all 64 Compute Nodes. In addition SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server (10SP2) (X86-64) was selected as the OS for all of the nodes.
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>Now on to my question which will more then
likely be the first of many. In the collective group wisdom what would be
the most efficient & effective way to “push” the SLES OS out to
all of the compute nodes once it is fully installed & configured on the
Head Node. In my research I’ve read about various Cluster packages/distributions
that have that capability built in, such as ROCKS & OSCAR which appear to
have the innate capability to do this as well as some additional tools that
would be very nice to use in managing the system. However, from my
current research in appears that they do not support SLES 10sp2 for the AMD 64-bit
Architecture (although since I am so new at this I could be wrong). Are
there any other “free” (money is always an issue) products or
methodologies I should be looking at to push the OS out & help me manage
the system? It appears that a commercial product </span></font><span
class=firstemph>Moab Cluster Builder will do everything I need & more, but
I do not have the funds to purchase a solution.</span><font color=black><span
style='color:black'> I also certainly do not want to perform a manual OS
install on all 64 Compute Nodes.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:black'>Thanks in advance for any & all help,
advice, guidance, or pearls of wisdom that you can provide this Neophyte. Oh
and please don’t ask why SLES 10sp2, I’ve already been through that
one with management. It is what I have been provided & will make
work.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><strong><b><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Steven A. Herborn<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></strong></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><strong><u1:country-region u2:st="on"><u1:place u2:st="on"><b><font
size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
color:navy'>U.S.</span></font></b></u1:place></u1:country-region></strong></st1:place></st1:country-region><strong><b><font
size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
color:navy'> Naval Academy<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></strong></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><strong><b><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Advanced Research
Computing<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></strong></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><strong><b><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>410-293-6480 (Desk)<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></strong></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><strong><b><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>757-418-0505 (Cell)</span></font></b></strong><strong><b><font
size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></b></strong></p>
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