Warewulf is a

computer cluster A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software. The comp ...

implementation Implementation is the realization of an application, or execution of a plan, idea, model, design, specification, standard, algorithm, or policy. Industry-specific definitions Computer science In computer science, an implementation is a real ...

toolkit A toolkit is an assembly of tools; set of basic building units for user interfaces. The word toolkit may refer to: * Abstract Window Toolkit * Accessibility Toolkit * Adventure Game Toolkit * B-Toolkit * Battlefield Mod Development Toolkit * Chemi ...

that facilitates the process of installing a

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Asteroid cluster, a small asteroid family * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study th ...

and long term

administration Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal ** Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an administrative officer, administ ...

. It does this by changing the administration paradigm to make all of the

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

node In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics * Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph * Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, line ...

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one lar ...

s manageable from one point, and automate the distribution of the node file system during node boot. It allows a central administration model for all slave nodes and includes the tools needed to build configuration files, monitor, and control the nodes. It is totally customizable and can be adapted to just about any type of cluster. From the software administration perspective it does not make much difference if you are running 2 nodes or 500 nodes. The procedure is still the same, which is why Warewulf is scalable from the admins perspective. Also, because it uses a standard chroot'able file system for every node, it is extremely configurable and lends itself to custom environments very easily. While Warewulf was designed to be a

high-performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into a multi ...

(HPC) system, it is not an HPC system in itself. Warewulf is more along the lines of a distributed

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

distribution, or more specifically a system for replicating and managing small, lightweight Linux systems from one master. Using Warewulf, HPC packages such as

LAM/MPI LAM/MPI is one of the predecessors of the Open MPI project. Open MPI represents a community-driven, next generation implementation of a Message Passing Interface (MPI) fundamentally designed upon a component architecture to make an extremely power ...

MPICH MPICH, formerly known as MPICH2, is a freely available, portable implementation of MPI, a standard for message-passing for distributed-memory applications used in parallel computing. MPICH is Free and open source software with some public domain ...

Sun Grid Engine Oracle Grid Engine, previously known as Sun Grid Engine (SGE), CODINE (Computing in Distributed Networked Environments) or GRD (Global Resource Director), was a grid computing computer cluster software system (otherwise known as a batch-queuing ...

PVM Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) is a software tool for parallel networking of computers. It is designed to allow a network of heterogeneous Unix and/or Windows machines to be used as a single distributed parallel processor. Thus large computatio ...

, etc. can be easily deployed throughout the cluster. Warewulf solves the problem of slave node management rather than being a strict HPC specific system (even though it was designed with HPC in mind). Because of this it is as flexible as a home grown cluster, but administratively scales very well. As a result of this flexibility and ease of customization, Warewulf has been used not only on production HPC implementations, but also development systems like KASY0 (the first system to break the one hundred dollar per

GFLOPS In computing, floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate mea ...

barrier), and non HPC systems such as

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initi ...

cluster farms,

intrusion detection An intrusion detection system (IDS; also intrusion prevention system or IPS) is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations. Any intrusion activity or violation is typically rep ...

clusters, and

high-availability cluster High-availability clusters (also known as HA clusters, fail-over clusters) are groups of computers that support server applications that can be reliably utilized with a minimum amount of down-time. They operate by using high availability so ...

References

External links

Warewulf Project

Warewulf on Github

Admin Magazine: Warewulf Cluster Manager – Howlingly Great

Admin Magazine: Warewulf Cluster Manager – Part 2

Admin Magazine: Warewulf Cluster Manager – Part 3

Admin Magazine: Warewulf Cluster Manager – Part 4

Admin Magazine: Warewulf Cluster Manager Listings 1-6

General Warewulf Discussions

Warewulf Development Discussions

Perceus
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070416220700/http://www.perceus.org/ , date=2007-04-16 Cluster computing

See also

References

External links