[Beowulf] Software installation across cluster

[Michael Gutteridge]

I'll plus-one your two-cents there.

We're using an NFS mounted application file system where we have requested
tools- it's organized by tool name and version.  Modules has been an
absolute revelation for keeping things sensible when maintaining multiple
versions of software.

We do use Puppet for managing the nodes themselves, including the versions
of system software that are installed (/usr and below).  Fair warning:
Puppet is fairly dependent on packaging for deploying software. There are
add-on modules that allow installation from tarballs... those do a pretty
good job, but I haven't used them extensively.

What you may look into at the same time is build management and automation
for your unbundled tools.  We don't have anything at the moment and I'm
*really* not looking forward to the next OS upgrade.

Best

Michael


On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Chris Dagdigian <dag at sonsorol.org> wrote:

>
> Environment Modules (http://modules.sourceforge.net/) or the more modern
> derivatives are pretty darn universal in cluster environments where a
> shared filesystem can be used to host an application/tools tree. Do one
> install and one module file and it's instantly available across the
> cluster. Does a great job of allowing you to host and offer many different
> versions/permutations of the same application.
>
> After that you get less universal and odder more DIY setups. Some groups
> will roll software into custom .rpm, .pkg or .deb packages depending on
> their OS and will do all of their custom/internal software as binary
> packages hosted on a central app repository server. Lots of hacks involving
> passwordless SSH scripts run on remote nodes to replicate files or
> dump/unpack a tarball representing a tool.
>
> And finally the cool DevOps kids are using Puppet, Chef, SaltStack,
> Ansible, Cfengine, etc. configuration management / orchestration toolkits
> -- those are often overkill for simple software installs but they *excel*
> at maintaining and managing configuration states across many different
> systems. If your entire cluster is Puppetized one could easily come up with
> a puppet-based method for installing or managing the installation of
> software
>
> My $.02 of course
>
>
>
>
> Trevor Gale wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I was wondering what solutions other use for easy software installation
>> across clusters. Is there any method that is generally accepted to be the
>> most effective for making sure that all the software is consistent across
>> each node?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Trevor
>> ___________
>>
>
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