NPACI rocks clusters: Tools for easily deploying and maintaining manageable high-performance linux clusters

Abstract

High-performance computing clusters (commodity hardware with low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnects) based on Linux, are rapidly becoming the dominant computing platform for a wide range of scientific disciplines. Yet, straightforward software installation, maintenance, and health monitoring for large-scale clusters has been a consistent and nagging problem for non-cluster experts. The complexity of managing hardware heterogeneity, tracking security and bug fixes, insuring consistency of software across nodes, and orchestrating wholesale (or forklift) upgrades of Linux OS releases (every 6 months) often discourages would-be cluster users.