HP XC System Software Installation Guide Version 3.1

Table 2-1 HP XC Software Stack (continued)
DescriptionSoftware Product Name
Platform's High Performance Computing version of LSF, LSF-HPC, has been
integrated with SLURM in response to the growing need for a lightweight, powerful
workload management system that is scalable and can support parallel,
compute-intensive workloads across computing resources.
LSF-HPC with SLURM contains the same queuing and scheduling management
as standard LSF, but it is integrated with SLURM to gather information and manage
the compute resources. This integration allows users to make use of SLURM's
simple commands to perform a variety of parallel tasks within their LSF batch
scripts. SLURM also provides administration personnel a small set of powerful
tools to manage the resources of an HP XC system.
LSF-HPC with SLURM
Standard LSF is the industry standard Platform LSF product used for workload
management across clusters of compute resources. It features comprehensive
workload management policies in addition to simple first-come, first-serve
scheduling (fairshare, preemption, backfill, advance reservation, service-level
agreement, and so on). Standard LSF is suited for jobs that do not have complex
parallel computational needs and is ideal for processing large volumes of serial,
single-process jobs.
For more information about where to obtain Platform LSF documentation, see
“Supplementary Software Products” (page 18).
Standard LSF
MySQL is a third-party application that creates and modifies the HP XC
configuration and management database (CMDB).
MySQL
Nagios is a system and network monitoring application. It watches hosts and
services that you specify and alerts you when problems occur or are resolved. On
an HP XC system, Nagios is integrated with SuperMon for monitoring capabilities.
Nagios
The pdsh shell is a multithreaded remote shell that executes commands on multiple
remote hosts in parallel.
Parallel Distributed Shell (pdsh)
SLURM was developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Linux
Networks. SLURM is a resource manager for Linux clusters. It manages the key
resource on an HP XC system: the compute nodes.
SLURM
SuperMon is a highly scalable, high-speed cluster monitoring system. SuperMon
provides all required node statistics to the Nagios subsystem. System statistics are
tiered, aggregated, and stored in the configuration and management database.
SuperMon
The syslog-ng logging tool improves upon traditional syslog functionality. It
supplies more flexibility to handle logs, adds better filters, and contains a better
forwarding mechanism.
syslog-ng
The SystemImager tool synchronizes the configuration of nodes across the system
using image propagation. This facilitates ease of installation of the initial software
and ease of upgrading software and configuration files.
SystemImager
See “Related Software Products and Additional Publications” (page 19) for links and pointers to more
information about the open source and third-party software components that are integrated into the XC
core technology.
2.1.3 Kickstart Installation File
The ks.cfg Kickstart installation file is supplied on the HP XC System Software DVD. Default values
provided by HP reduce the number of answers you have to provide during the installation session. The
Kickstart file differs depending on the cluster platform architecture, and the appropriate version of the
file is included on the distribution media.
Table 2-2 lists the default values defined in the Kickstart file, regardless of the cluster platform.
Table 2-2 Default Values in the ks.cfg File
Default ValueItem
United States (U.S.)Keyboard type
Generic three button mouse emulationMouse
U.S. EnglishLanguage used by the installation process
34 Installing Software on the Head Node