After lots of trial, error, and reading, I’ve finally gotten our Novell cluster online.

Just to clarify, no, the cluster isn’t called totally_sweet_cluster, although that would be totally sweet. Right now it’s just two nodes(Dell PowerEdge 1950) running iScsi initiator and one server(Dell PowerEdge 2950) running as the iScsi Target. I have one extra 1950 that I still need to install NetWare on and configure. I’m working on getting the proper cluster licenses so I can install the extra node as OES only gives you licenses for two nodes out of the box.  I will play with the service migration tomorrow assuming I have the time.

We’re moving forward with our imaging.  Multicast imaging with ZenWorks is a huge benefit for us.  It even saves the computer name and ip address so we don’t have to manually configure that on each machine when we image a lab.  Once the summer is over, I need to sit down and figure out how to build a Zen image disk, specifically how to upgrade the kernel and initrd in the ISO.  Until then, http://www.zenimaging.info is a great site to grab up to date zen ISOs and PXE related software.

The air conditioner in our server room has been faltering.  It’s a rather large dedicated unit so it should have no problem handling the heat our servers generate.   However, the temperature in the room would swing by a matter of 10 degrees F from 70 degrees to 80 degrees in half an hour or less.  Lately it has been acting far worse.  Twice yesterday the room hit 90+ degrees.  Obviously, that’s not good.  Thanks to our facilities department, the problem was discovered and fixed.  It was sitting around 70 degrees when I left.  I’m hoping the issue is solved.  A hot data center isn’t a good environment, especially when you’re looking to add more servers.

Finally, here’s an obligatory Linux screen shot.  I’ve been trying to use my OpenSUSE install as much as possible lately.

I had to curb my Linux fun for a bit, or so I thought, to work on some summer tasks. The first thing I needed to do was get a framework for our imaging in place. Historically, we have used Ghost from back when Binary Labs owned a produced it. We never really got into multi casting for no particularly good reason. We continued to lean on the old Dos ODI based boot disks which ran on IPX. Some might remember the old lsl, 3c90x, ipxodi, vlm commands like they were yesterday. I do too, mostly because they were yesterday for us, literally.

We have had ZenWorks in place for a while. I even installed the Zen 7 imaging bits last summer but never got around to playing with it until recently. In the past week, I have finally been able to create boot CDs and USB thumb drives which boot to a menu driven shell script for all of our normal everyday tasks. I even tested multi casting and it seems to be working well. I think we’ve officially caught up to the year 2000 with our imaging.

I have all the server equipment ordered I need for the summer. It shaping up that our iSCSI cluster is a go. If anyone has any pro tips with Novell Cluster Services, feel free to drop me a line.  You know, anything that I might want to avoid because a year down the road I might be convinced to try and build a time machine out of a Delorean so I can produce the necessary 1.21 gigawatts I need for time travel to come back and slap myself in the back of the head for the dumb decision I’m about to make…in the past…or something.

On an unrelated note, I was accused of being a Novell employee or a plant on a news site/message board this week. I’ve been called plenty of things in my life, that’s the first time I’ve been tagged as a corporate shill. Should I be honored?

I had a box running OpenBSD 4.0 and pf up and running.  Eventually I took a look at pfsense.  I installed it and before I knew it, I had set up a small two node fail over “cluster”.  Setting up carp/pfsync is fairly easy.  It also comes with all sorts of built in graphing tools, which is nice to see when you’re getting most of your traffic.  I still have all inbound(requested web traffic) going through my BorderManager proxy.  Eventually I’d like to have that behind the firewall as well for that extra layer of security and the ability to keep better track of our bandwidth usage.

I’ve been thinking about trying to come up with a cluster solution for file/print and our groupwise post offices.  This would only be for staff and faculty.  A fully equipped cluster and SAN solution for the entire student body would be very cost prohibitive.  However, I have been thinking about an iSCSI solution for the faculty and staff.  There are far less people in that group, but the ability to access network resources is far more critical.  I called an iSCSI SAN maker and saw my dreams of this cluster come crashing down.  Even iSCSI SAN appliances cost over $20k.  I was brought to my attention that iSCSI without the appliance might still be an option.  I’ll be talking to a network guy at another school district who has rolled out an iSCSI cluster on “pedestrian” equipment and see what is viable. If anyone has any experience with this, drop me a line.

I’m in the process of doing our DST stuff.  Patching the NetWare servers with dstshift.nlm was easy, same with the Suse servers.  Rolling out patches for our Windows workstations is proving to be slightly more difficult.  I’m trying to set up a silent MSI based installer which takes the Microsoft patch and deploys it through the ZenWorks application launcher.  I’ve heard that is frowned on by Microsoft.  I’m going to have to do some testing to see if it really works.  I’m going to have to patch the GWIA and WebAccess as well.