Yes, in future node purchases we will start including cheap flash drives. Unfortunately I have 450+ existing diskless nodes, back to Sandy Bridge.
Off topic, sorry, but advantages are ability to get better problem logs, crash dumps, local tmp space bigger than memory, etc. I think some of the newer nodes can be retrofitted with M.2 cards, but it definitely makes sense to put them in new nodes. I would not be doing the iSCSI think in production, but it sounds like a good tool to have in my belt. > On Oct 24, 2018, at 9:27 AM, Jarrod Johnson <jjohns...@lenovo.com> wrote: > > Well, you don’t need the iscsi target to run integrated with a high > performance filesystem. There may performance benefit to be had by doing so, > but ‘good enough’ for having a faux-diskful deployment can be had by running > a software iscsi target against a ‘file’. > > > For example: > https://www.certdepot.net/rhel7-configure-iscsi-target-initiator-persistently/ > > <https://www.certdepot.net/rhel7-configure-iscsi-target-initiator-persistently/> > > iSCSI Target Configuration section. > > For the initiator, you can set the iscsi table params, e.g.: > > nodech node iscsi.target=iqn.2018-10.mycluster:n3 iscsi.lun=1 > iscsi.server=172.33.1.1 > > Then ‘nodeset’ will automatically configure xnba to do iscsi boot. > > It hasn’t been maintained in a while, and targets tgtadm instead of > targetcli, but xCAT has: > Setupiscsidev xcat command frontends tgtadm, though I don’t know if that is > still relevant.. > > In practice, the iSCSI interest has subsided and so we haven’t looked > carefully at it in a long time, it’s handy for ‘diskful experience on > diskless node’, but if it were production level it’s just far less trouble to > have a cheap M.2 SSD in everything. > > > > From: David Johnson <david_john...@brown.edu> > Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 9:16 AM > To: xCAT Users Mailing list <xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net> > Subject: Re: [xcat-user] [External] Re: Brand new systemimager (beta) > > Thanks, Jarrod, for the suggestions. > The iSCSI technique seems intriguing, however we haven’t made the leap into > CES > protocols. Still running cNFS and clustered CIFS. I see that CES offers > iSCSI block > device export of a file for booting purposes only. Is there a way to > home-brew this > on 4.2.3 without protocols? > > > On Oct 24, 2018, at 8:54 AM, Jarrod Johnson <jjohns...@lenovo.com > <mailto:jjohns...@lenovo.com>> wrote: > > Note that one strategy I have done for scenarios where I want to do something > disk like without a disk has been to set up an iSCSI install, using software > target temporarily. > > Alternatively if I want a more traditionally booting thing, I’ll launch a > temporary virtual machine. > > I haven’t personally had need for such a thing lately, but those are two > strategies I’ve used, depending on what was needed. > > From: David Johnson <david_john...@brown.edu > <mailto:david_john...@brown.edu>> > Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 8:51 AM > To: xCAT Users Mailing list <xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net > <mailto:xcat-user@lists.sourceforge.net>> > Subject: [External] Re: [xcat-user] Brand new systemimager (beta) > > Thank you for all these enhancements. > I have a question that in the past was answered “no”…. > Is there a way to get your golden image from a node that is netbooted? > Previously I would have to drive a mile, find a parking spot, find a used > drive lying around, > push it into an idle node, etc….. > The only time I need to do this is when the image I want to build is newer > kernel or different > architecture from the management node. > > Thanks again, > — ddj > Dave Johnson > > > > On Oct 24, 2018, at 4:28 AM, Olivier Lahaye <olivier.laha...@free.fr > <mailto:olivier.laha...@free.fr>> wrote: > > Hi, > > I’m the main active developper for systemimager and saw some questions about > it in this mailing list. > 1st of all, the new systemimager has nothing to do with the old one regarding > the imager which is now generated using dracut and has a GUI based on > Plymouth (optional when running) > See https://github.com/finley/SystemImager/wiki > <https://github.com/finley/SystemImager/wiki> > > The quick start guide and screenshot sections are the only one that are up to > date. > > You’ll notice that now, systemimager is able to deploy and run the os without > a single reboot! > > The currently supported OS are RHEL/CentOS 6 and 7, Fedora 27, 28, Upcomming > 29 and OpenSUSE 42.3 and newer. > > It could/should work on deb distros if I had time to do packaging and if > dracut can be installed aside initramfstools without conflicts. It is planned > and will work on all deb distros that have dracut and Plymouth package. I > have no date for availability as it depends on my spare time. (Feel free to > join if you have deb packaging and rpm spec knowledge to port it to Debian > dir structure (mainly dependency helpers to port from rpm to deb)) > > Regards, > — > Olivier Lahaye > _______________________________________________ > xCAT-user mailing list > xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net <mailto:xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xcat-user > <https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xcat-user> > > _______________________________________________ > xCAT-user mailing list > xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net <mailto:xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xcat-user > <https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xcat-user> > > _______________________________________________ > xCAT-user mailing list > xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net <mailto:xCAT-user@lists.sourceforge.net> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xcat-user > <https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xcat-user>
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