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This section provides a summary of the software installation
process, a description of the software stack, information about the Kickstart
installation file, and a description of the default file system layout that
is applied to the installation disk. Kickstart Installation Process | |
The XC
software installation process begins on the head node and is based on the
Kickstart automated installation process. The HP XC Kickstart process
uses a predefined configuration file that contains the answers to many of
the questions required to install the base operating system for an HP XC system. The single HP XC DVD
software distribution contains a bootable installation image and an embedded
Kickstart file. When you issue the command to initiate a Kickstart installation,
the installation process finds the Kickstart file on the DVD, and the Kickstart
file then controls the base operating system installation after you provide
a few required responses. After the head node is installed, it eventually
also becomes the golden client, which is the node that
represents the configuration from which all other nodes are replicated. Log Files A record of the HP XC installation process and the installed HP XC RPMs
is stored in the /var/log/postinstall.log file. A record
of the base Gnu/Linux system installation is stored in the /root/install.log file. HP XC Software Stack | |
The HP XC software stack consists of a combination of
HP proprietary, third-party, and open source software products. Table 2-1 alphabetically lists the software products that are
contained in the HP XC software stack. These software products are
contained on a single DVD and are installed automatically by the HP XC software
installation process. Table 2-1 HP XC Software Stack | Software Product Name | Description |
|---|
HP MPI | HP
MPI provides optimized libraries for message passing designed specifically
to make high-performance use of the system interconnect. HP MPI complies fully
with the MPI-1.2 standard. HP MPI also complies with the MPI-2 standard, with
restrictions. | HP XC System Software Version 3.1 | HP XC System Software provides the installation, configuration, administration,
and management tools to support HP XC systems on HP Cluster Platforms
3000, 4000, and 6000. | HPC Linux for High Performance Computing | HPC
Linux provides Linux ABI (Application Binary Interface) compatibility, which
provides: The ability to run binary serial codes from compatible Linux
systems Access to community-developed software and access to a large
application catalog
| Linux Virtual Server (LVS) | LVS provides a system alias that enables user
logins to be distributed across multiple login nodes and single system sign-on
for both users and administrators. | LSF-HPC with SLURM | Platform's
High Performance Computing version of LSF, LSF-HPC, has been integrated with
SLURM in response to the growing need for a lightweight, powerful workload
management system that is scalable and can support parallel, compute-intensive
workloads across computing resources. LSF-HPC with SLURM contains the
same queuing and scheduling management as standard LSF, but it is integrated
with SLURM to gather information and manage the compute resources. This integration
allows users to make use of SLURM's simple commands to perform a variety of
parallel tasks within their LSF batch scripts. SLURM also provides administration
personnel a small set of powerful tools to manage the resources of an HP XC system. | Standard LSF | Standard LSF is
the industry standard Platform LSF product used for workload management across
clusters of compute resources. It features comprehensive workload management
policies in addition to simple first-come, first-serve scheduling (fairshare,
preemption, backfill, advance reservation, service-level agreement, and so
on). Standard LSF is suited for jobs that do not have complex parallel computational
needs and is ideal for processing large volumes of serial, single-process
jobs. For more information about where to obtain
Platform LSF documentation, see “Supplementary Software Products”. | MySQL | MySQL is a third-party application that creates and
modifies the HP XC configuration and management database (CMDB). | Nagios | Nagios
is a system and network monitoring application. It watches hosts and services
that you specify and alerts you when problems occur or are resolved. On an HP XC system,
Nagios is integrated with SuperMon for monitoring capabilities. | Parallel Distributed Shell (pdsh) | The pdsh shell is a multithreaded
remote shell that executes commands on multiple remote hosts in parallel. | SLURM | SLURM
was developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Linux Networks.
SLURM is a resource manager for Linux clusters. It manages the key resource
on an HP XC system: the compute nodes. | SuperMon | SuperMon
is a highly scalable, high-speed cluster monitoring system. SuperMon provides
all required node statistics to the Nagios subsystem. System statistics are
tiered, aggregated, and stored in the configuration and management database. | syslog-ng | The syslog-ng logging tool
improves upon traditional syslog functionality. It supplies
more flexibility to handle logs, adds better filters, and contains a better
forwarding mechanism. | SystemImager | The
SystemImager tool synchronizes the configuration of nodes across the system
using image propagation. This facilitates ease of installation of the initial
software and ease of upgrading software and configuration files. |
See “Related Software Products and Additional Publications” for
links and pointers to more information about the open source and third-party
software components that are integrated into the XC core technology. Kickstart Installation File | |
The ks.cfg Kickstart
installation file is supplied on the HP XC System Software DVD. Default values provided
by HP reduce the number of answers you have to provide during the installation
session. The Kickstart file differs depending on the cluster platform architecture,
and the appropriate version of the file is included on the distribution media. Table 2-2 lists
the default values defined in the Kickstart file, regardless of the cluster
platform. Table 2-2 Default Values in the ks.cfg File | Item | Default
Value |
|---|
| Keyboard type | United
States (U.S.) | | Mouse | Generic three
button mouse emulation | | Language used by the installation process | U.S. English | | Language installed on the system | U.S. English | | Desktop manager | GNOME |
You can modify these values after the installation process
is complete by using standard Linux system administration procedures. Default File System Layout and Disk Partition Sizes | |
Table 2-3 lists
the default file system layout that is applied to the head node system disk.
Because total disk size may vary, partition sizes are shown as a percentage
of total disk size. The HP XC System Software Administration Guide describes the purpose and content of each
file system. Table 2-3 Default Disk Partition Layout on the Head Node | File System Name | Partition
Size With /hptc_cluster File System | Partition
Size Without /hptc_cluster File System |
|---|
3 swap partitions | 2
GB * 3 = 6 GB total swap space[1] | 2 GB * 3 = 6 GB
total swap space[1] | /boot (AMD Opteron™
and Intel® Xeon™ systems) or /boot/efi (Itanium®
systems) | 1 percent of remaining
disk space | 1 percent of remaining
disk space | / (root) | 50 percent of remaining disk space | 60 percent of remaining disk space | /var | 29 percent of remaining disk space | 39 percent of remaining disk space | /hptc_cluster (on head
node only) | 20 percent of remaining
disk space | N/A |
The default disk partition layout for client nodes (that
is, nodes other than the head node) is listed in Table 3-6. |
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