Pumpkin

Pumpkin

Pumpkin is our new 8 CPU 24 disk monster machine. It is really, really nice. Currently it is only tied to the "corn" ip address. Because of this, it seems like we're going to have Corn be the big physical machine, and pumpkin be the virtualized machine.

Basic Setup

• We will run Xen on this so that it can have 2 personalies: Pumpkin, 64-bit, and Corn, 32-bit, RHEL5.
  • Xen documentation of questionable quality.
  • In order to do this right, Pumpkin should be the host, since you can't virtualize 64-bit under 32-bit, but you can do the other way around. See the bottom of http://www.redhat.com/rhel/virtualization/.
  • These may come in handy: http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/rhel5/rhel5_xen_virtualization/rhel5_virt-install-wizard.html and http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/en-US/RHEL510/Virtualization_Guide/index.html
• The RAID is currently split. This allows for much easier maintenance and in the future possible upgrades.
  • Disk 1 to 11 is in RAID Set 0, which holds the RAID Volumes: System (300GB, RAID6, SCSI:0.0.0), System1(300GB, RAID6, SCSI:0.0.1), Data1 (6833GB, RAID5, SCSI:0.0.2)
  • Disk 11 to 22 is RAID Set 1, which holds the RAID Volume: Data2 (7499GB, RAID5, SCSI:0.0.3)
  • Disk 23 and 24 are passthrough (single disks) at SCSI:0.0.6 and SCSI:0.0.7. These can be used as spares, as backup, or to expand the other RAID sets later on. Currently they are seen as /dev/sde* and /dev/sdf*. /dev/sdf1 and /dev/sdf2 hold the old RHEL4 install the system came with.
  • The RAID card can be monitored at http://10.0.0.99/ login as "admin" with a password that is the same as the door combo.
  • To use this card with Linux you need a driver: arcmsr. This must be part of the initrd for the kernel, else you cannot boot from the RAID. You can also install from the CDs, if you have a driver floppy. It will then add the arcmsr driver into the initrd for you. You will still always need to have this driver!
    • The kernel module can be build from the sources located in /usr/src/kernels/Acera_RAID. Just run make.
• There exists a temporary drive which holds a RHEL5 distro and the original RHEL4 distro from the manufacturer. It is currently disconnected from pumpkin. This drive was mirrored to /dev/sdf*, and /dev/sde{1,2} also has an old RHEL5 distro. We can try to use these as temporary drives for cloning other systems.

Virtual Hosts

• The system runs the alternate 2nd personality as "Corn".
• This system is setup with Xen on the System1 drive.
• A virtual host needs to be setup special. Not sure yet exactly how, but at a minimum: Only subscribe to "base channel" and "Tools" (other may be ok, check!). Install the redhad-virtualization-host package. Now the system show up as a "Virtual Host" on the RHN licensing page, however, it still consumes a real license. I could not figure out how to move it. RHN doc is rather sparse. At least we are closer to getting this be a virtual license.
• The virtual host needs to have both ethernets bridged. This can be done by modifying the /etc/xen/scripts/network-bridge script, which is now network-bridge-two which calls the original twice, and then modify, "corn" to include vif = [ "mac=00:16:3e:2d:6b:53,bridge=xenbr1", "mac=00:16:3e:2d:6b:53,bridge=xenbr1,script=vif-bridge", "mac=00:16:3e:12:17:b1,bridge=xenbr0,script=vif-bridge" ], see http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenNetworking. The devices are now there, but the second one still does not work.

To Do

• Setup SNMP for cacti monitoring.
• Add the new systems to the lentil backup script
• There must be other things....
• Setup sensors so that we can monitor the system. Will have to wait for a kernel that supports it

Done

• Setup ethernet.
• Setup RAID volumes.
• Setup partitions and create file systems.
• Move the system to System drive and remove the current temp drive.
• Setup mount points for the data drives.
• Setup LDAP for users to log in.
• Setup Exports, so other systems can see the drives. There were issues with firewall, so I modeled the firewall after taro's. Seems to be working, I can successfully ls /net/data/pumpkin1 and ls /net/data/pumpkin2 on einstein.
• Setup autofs so that it can see other drives. What other drives? It's working for einstein:/home Other drives such as data drives
• Setup smartd so we will know when a disk is going bad. This can be done inside the RAID card using a system to send SNMP and EMAIL. but it needs to be done. E-mail seems to be set up, let's see if we get any through npg-admins
• Restrict access (/etc/security/access.conf)
• Setup sudo on both pumpkin and corn.