Installation Guide

Insert the drive into the server that you want to install the Qlustar OS on and boot. Make sure to select the USB drive as the boot device, either by entering the BIOS and changing the boot order, or by entering a boot menu and then selecting the drive. On some BIOSes, the latter is achieved by pressing the key F7 or F12.

When the server boots from your drive, it will present a menu with various alternative boot options of which the first is highlighted (see picture). If you install via a serial console (e.g. IPMI serial-over-LAN), select the correct entry (ttyS0/1/2) depending on your hardware setup. Press Enter to start the installation. After the kernel was loaded, you will see the kernel messages on the screen followed by some messages of the installation system. Finally, the installer will present its welcome screen at which you can start the setup process by pressing Enter.

In the first screen you can select the timezone and keyboard mapping. After you have made your choices, selected OK and pressed Enter, the keyboard mapping will be configured according to your choice. If you have selected a wrong mapping, the keyboard will not function properly. If this is still the case after changing the mapping to the correct value, you will have to reboot the server and start the installation from scratch.

In this screen you can select the disk(s) to install Qlustar on. If there is more than one disk in the system, you can select multiple disks and create a RAID array (different RAID levels can be chosen depending on the number of the disks available). The chosen disk (or created RAID device) will then be used as a LVM physical volume to create a LVM volume group (the name of which can be specified). Four ext4 file-systems (root, var, tmp, apps) will automatically be created on equally named LVM logical volumes within this volume group.

A separate file-system is used for the home directories. If there are additional unused disks in the system you are offered the choice to use them in the next screen. If not, you can use the previously configured volume group for this additional file-system. If you choose Other, then no configuration for a home file-system will be done. In this case, you won’t be able to add any cluster users without further manual steps to setup a home file-system.

This screen only appears if you have selected Select disks in the previous step. You can choose the disks and possibly the raid level to use for the home file-system similar to the previous dialog.

In this screen, you configure the IP addresses for the cluster and public network. The installer has some logic to check for valid network configuration parameters as well as suggesting reasonable values. The chosen number of compute nodes NK in the cluster determines the suggested cluster network address and other parameters. It doesn’t have to be accurate, just an approximate number will do.

You can also set the hostname (associated with the public IP) for the new head-node. The name of the head-node’s cluster-internal interface is beosrv-c. Note that two network adapters are necessary for proper operation of your cluster.

It’s important that you correctly identify external (public/access to the Internet) and internal (cluster) network adapters. If you select DHCP as the configuration method for the public interface, make sure to add its IP address later to the corresponding Network Config in the graphical QluMan GUI. If you don’t have any special reason for changing the suggested address/netmask of the internal adapter, we recommend to leave them unchanged.

Postfix is running on the head-node as the central mail transfer agent. You need to specify a mail relay host (either by name if resolvable via DNS or by IP) in your LAN, where mail of the cluster will be accepted and redistributed. Root mails generated on the cluster, will be redirected to a list of e-mail addresses, that you can enter next (multiple addresses should be separated by a comma). Having a correctly functioning mail setup is required to receive monitoring messages.

Here you have the possibility to configure optional Infiniband (IB) and/or IPMI network parameters, if you have the corresponding hardware in your cluster.

If there are nodes with IB, you first need to set the option whether the head-node itself also has IB hardware or not. If it doesn’t, you only need to choose the IB TCP/IP network address parameters (defaults are again recommended).

Otherwise, you have the additional choice to run OpenSM (IB subnet manager) on the head-node. Note, that at least one node (or switch) in an IB fabric has to run a subnet manager. Given the value of the IB network address, the host part of the IB adapter’s IP address will be set from the host part of the Ethernet address of the node in the cluster network. Example: IP cluster network 192.168.52.100 - IP IB network 192.168.53.100 (see also the corresponding section of the QluMan Guide).

As with IB, if some of the nodes of your cluster have an IPMI adapter that is connected to a switch, you can enter the network address parameters that will be used to configure its IP address. Again, the host part of the IPMI adapter’s IP will be derived from its cluster network IP (see above). Additional host-specific IPMI configuration options can be set in QluMan.

For the sake of system stability and performance, it is usually a good idea to separate user from system activities as much as possible. To achieve this, we suggest to run only system-related tasks directly on the cluster’s head-node(s) and have physical or virtual front-end (FE) nodes for user access/activity.

In this dialog you can choose to setup a virtual FE node as a virtual machine running on the head-node. If you decide not to do so, we advise to assign a physical machine as a FE node at a later stage. The suggestions for the network parameters of the FE VM are derived from the head-node’s values. Again, if you select DHCP as the configuration method for the public interface, make sure to add its IP address later to the corresponding Network Config in the QluMan GUI. The cluster node name of this FE node will be login-c.

You also have the option to create a virtual demo-cluster on the head-node, provided the latter has enough RAM. When choosing the number of demo-nodes, keep in mind, that each one of them will be configured with 1.5GB of main memory. Even if configured, the VMs will not be started automatically though, so the head-node will be able to boot, even if a huge number of demo VMs are chosen.

If you need a proxy to access the internet, you can enter the relevant proxy parameters here. To use a serial device for console access, select the next option and enter the device name. Additional kernel parameters for the head-node can be specified next (typically, none are needed). Finally, type in the password for the root user twice.

Before the actual installation will begin, the final screen shows a summary of the settings that have been selected/will be used (you will have to move back with the left arrow key in order to scroll down in the summary screen). If there are any parameters, you want to change, just go back and make the required modifications.

The actual installation process will take a few minutes to complete. Press Enter when requested at the end of the process. Remove the USB drive and press Enter again to reboot. Please note that the head-node has a text-only console. An X server (graphical interface) is not installed in order to keep resource consumption low and eliminate package overhead.