ROCKS CLUSTER

ROCKS CLUSTER



ROCKS CLUSTER


3.2. Install and Configure Your Fronten



This section describes how to install your Rocks cluster frontend.
Warning
The minimum requirement to bring up a frontend is to have the following rolls:
  • Kernel/Boot Roll CD
  • Base Roll CD
  • OS Roll CD - Disk 1
  • OS Roll CD - Disk 2
Additionally, the official Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (5.8) or Linux (6.3) can be substituted substituted for the OS Rolls. Also, any true rebuild of RHEL 5 update 8 or RHEL 6 Update 3 can be used. If you substitute the OS Rolls with one of the above distributions, you must supply all the CDs from the distribution (which usually is 6 to 9 CDs).
  1. Insert the Kernel/Boot Roll CD into your frontend machine and reset the frontend machine.
    Note
    For the remainder of this section, well use the example of installing a bare-bones frontend, that is, well be using the Kernel/Boot Roll, base Roll, OS - Disk 1 Roll and the OS - Disk 2 Roll.
  2. After the frontend boots off the CD, you will see:
    When you see the screen above, type:

    build
    Warning
    The "boot:" prompt arrives and departs the screen quickly. It is easy to miss. If you do miss it, the node will assume it is a compute appliance, and the frontend installation will fail and you will have to restart the installation (by rebooting the node).
    Tip
    It is possible to bypass the DHCP process and have the install ask for network parameters. If you know the name of device used by the kernel for public access (e.g.eth1,p2p1,...), then specify as follows (using p2p1 for the public net): build ksdevice=p2p1 asknetwork respectively.
    Tip
    If the installation fails, very often you will see a screen that complains of a missing /tmp/ks.cfg kickstart file. To get more information about the failure, access the kickstart and system log by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F3 and Ctrl-Alt-F4 respectively.
    After you type build, the installer will start running.
  3. Warning
    All screens in this step may not appear during your installation. You will only see these screens if there is not a DHCP server on your public network that answers the frontends DHCP request.
    If you see the screen below:
    Youll want to: 1) enable IPv4 support, 2) select manual configuration for the IPv4 support (no DHCP) and, 3) disable IPv6 support. The screen should look like:
    After your screen looks like the above, hit "OK". Then youll see the "Manual TCP/IP Configuration" screen:
    In this screen, enter the public IP configuration. Heres an example of the public IP info we entered for one our frontends:
    After you fill in the public IP info, hit "OK".
  4. Soon, youll see a screen that looks like:
    From this screen, youll select your rolls.
    In this procedure, well only be using CD media, so well only be clicking on the CD/DVD-based Roll button.
    Click the CD/DVD-based Roll button.
  5. The CD will eject and you will see this screen:
    Put your first roll in the CD tray (for the first roll, since the Kernel/Boot Roll is already in the tray, simply push the tray back in).
    Click the Continue button.
  6. The Kernel/Boot Roll will be discovered and display the screen:
    Select the Kernel/Boot Roll by checking the Selected box and clicking the Submit button.
  7. This screen shows you have properly selected the Kernel/Boot Roll.
    Repeat steps 3-5 for the Base Roll and the OS rolls.
  8. When you have selected all the rolls associated with a bare-bones frontend, the screen should look like:
    When you are done with roll selection, click the Next button.
  9. Then youll see the Cluster Information screen:
    Note
    The one important field in this screen is the Fully-Qualified Host Name (all other fields are optional).
    Choose your hostname carefully. The hostname is written to dozens of files on both the frontend and compute nodes. If the hostname is changed after the frontend is installed, several cluster services will no longer be able to find the frontend machine. Some of these services include: SGE, NFS, AutoFS, and Apache.
    Fill out the form, then click the Next button.
  10. The public cluster network configuration screen allows you to set up the networking parameters for the ethernet network that connects the frontend to the outside network (e.g., the internet).
    The above window is an example of how we configured the external network on one of our frontend machines.
    Tip
    The installer allows you select which physical interface is the public interface, if there is more than one interface. the network interface is a pull down menu as below
  11. The private cluster network configuration screen allows you to set up the networking parameters for the ethernet network that connects the frontend to the compute nodes.
    Note
    It is recommended that you accept the defaults (by clicking the Next button). But for those who have unique circumstances that requires different values for the internal ethernet connection, we have exposed the network configuration parameters.
    Note
    If you have only one physical interface, the installer will create a virtual ethernet interface (e.g. eth0:0).
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