Fwd: [Beowulf] Configuration change monitoring

[Roland Krause]

--- Walid <walid.shaari at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> 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.
> 

Walid,
having dealt with this kind of problems in the past, I have learned to
recognize that you have a "people problem" for which I have not yet
found a satisfactory technical solution.

> 
> 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
> 

Putting a person in charge who establishes a few ground rules, monitors
their implementation and therefore manages the IT effort is likely a
more successful yet more costly approach. 

On a related note, cfengine can make life easier for heterogeneous
cluster administration. 

Roland