[Beowulf] Big storage

[Bruce Allen]

Hi Loic,

(I'm picking up a 6-month old thread.)

On Wed, 5 Sep 2007, Loic Tortay wrote:

> As of today we have 112 X4500, 112U are almost 3 racks which is quite a 
> lot due to our floor space constraints.

We're now doing the comissioning of our new cluster which includes about 
30 Linux storage server boxes of ~10TB each and (only!) 12 Sun X4500.

We have cloning scripts set up (Debian FAI) to automatically build the 
Linux boxes, but are less familiar with cloning in a Solaris environment. 
What method do you use to install and OS and patches onto your X4500s and 
ensure a homogenous environment.  If it's Sun's Jumpstart, would it be 
possible to see the config and Jumpstart file(s) that you use for this?

Since stock Solaris can not boot from ZFS, I'm a bit reluctant to throw 
away drives and storage space to host the OS separately on each X4500. 
One attractive alterative is to NFS-boot the Thumpers from a single 
central OS image.  Have you tried this yourself?  Where do you boot your 
X4500 systems from?

I'd be grateful for any advice, anecdotes, war stories, etc.

Cheers,
      Bruce