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Grendel: Bare Metal Provisioning System for High Performance Computing

  • SUNY Buffalo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Center for Computational Research (CCR) at the University at Buffalo has developed Grendel: a fast, easy to use, bare metal provisioning system for High Performance Computing (HPC). Grendel simplifies network booting racks of compute nodes by providing a robust PXE boot server, rest API, and node management in a single binary for easy installation. In this paper, we describe CCR's HPC network architecture and how Grendel was used to provision the center's Linux based compute clusters. We also present some modern features built into Grendel including automatic host discovery, deploying Live OS images to bare metal compute nodes, and delivering kernel, initramfs, and other provisioning assets using access tokens and trusted HTTPS.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPEARC 2020 - Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2020
Subtitle of host publicationCatch the Wave
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages13-18
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450366892
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 26 2020
Event2020 Conference on Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing: Catch the Wave, PEARC 2020 - Virtual, Online, United States
Duration: Jul 27 2020Jul 31 2020

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference2020 Conference on Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing: Catch the Wave, PEARC 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityVirtual, Online
Period07/27/2007/31/20

Keywords

  • bare metal provisioning
  • HPC administration
  • linux clusters
  • network booting

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