CMU cloning with Raid support

[cje]

Dear CMU users,

We installed sometimes ago a CMU cluster on DL165 G7 nodes. OS is centos 5 managed by CMU 5.1

We need now to increase the performance access to the local storage (knowing that the application running on the cluster does not recognize share FS preventing using Lustre for example)

The way to increase it would be to install a smart array controller with BBWC and add higher krpm disks/ss disks.

Since CMU does not recognize the Raid arrays, how should we install and clone the nodes?:

- define (by hand) a raid level in the golden node

- install thesystem and backup the golden image

- define each smart array raid array on all the nodes

- clone the nodes

Is that the way of doing a cloning on nodes with Raid arrays?

Thank you and best regards

Catherine

[Armugam_Pradeep]

Hello,

If you are planning to buy SA controllers for all nodes, you need to configure

raid arrays on each node first (not just the golden node) before being able to clone them.

CMU will not configure RAID arrays on the nodes while cloning.

There is an easier way to configure multiple nodes using hpacucli (Array config utility) tool

present in the CMU netboot environment.

  1) Network boot all the nodes in your cluster from GUI or CMU command line interface

  2) Once all the nodes are booted into CMU netboot environment, invoke hpacucli on each node to configure raid arrays. You can use pdsh tool on the cmu headnode to launch hpacucli on multiple nodes.

  3) Install the golden node with OS

  4) Take a backup of Golden node

 5)  Clone the other nodes with backup image

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Pradeep

[cje]

Hi Pradeep,

Thank you very much for the tip of launching hpacucli through CMU netboot environment.

It will be extremely useful accelerating raid config on a large number of nodes.

Thanks again for your detailed answer

Best regards

Catherine