ROCKS Test Server

Wish to have a second server on cluster to enable testing of new ROCKS configurations. It seems that it will be simpler to have an entirely separate server vs. trying to have production and test configurations active on the same server.

The exact details of the setup are to be worked out, however the main issues seem to be how to boot a compute node from the test server and how to syncronize configurations between the servers. Booting will have to rely on the dhcpd server on the production server (can't have two dhcp servers active on a network) unless further games are played such as using a test VLAN. The PXE boot from the production server will redirect the compute node to use the test server as its frontend. Syncing the servers will rely on SVN. It seems that automating backup of the MySQL database into SVN may be useful.

PXE booting

-- TomRockwell - 12 May 2008