Slave node ISO based filesystem implementation...

[Greg Kurtzer]

Hello,

I rebuilt one of my clusters recently using a build kit that I created which
creates bootable ISO images for the slave nodes. So far the system is 
working GREAT, and the removable CDROM filesystems are actually proving to be
very handy when nodes go down and need to be swapped out. Yes, there is an
initial slowness when the CDROM needs to spin up occasionally, but besides that
no complaints! It is easy to use, and can be extensively and easily modified.

I have told several people in my lab, and colleagues about this, and they were
all interested in replicating some of this work. Because of this I have
created a fairly simplistic downloadable build tree with the hopes that
someone else out there may also find it useful.

The cluster I implemented this on, only took me about 4 hours to build up from
scratch (to a working system). There are 8 nodes, and I am using Myrinet as
the interconnect. I based the master and the slave nodes on RedHat 7.2.

I don't know if there is already something out there like this, nor do I know
if anyone will find this useful, but I packaged and named it anyway.

It can be obtained from http://www.runlevelzero.net/greg/warewulf/ for any
one interested.

BTW, It also works great for temporary clusters in a lab or office because
nothing is written to the slave node local disk drive (except swapping if you
configure it to do so).

Greg
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:wq