LUG17

The CADES project at Oak Ridge National Lab deploys several Lustre file systems across multiple compute platforms. To simplify system administration, diskless Lustre servers are used with root file system images being managed by the GeDI software. Configuration changes to the root file system images are tracked using Ansible. Ansible's support for running playbooks in chroot directories is convenient for managing the Lustre server root images. In addition, Ansible playbooks can be used for common Lustre administration tasks such as formatting the file system and starting/stopping storage targets.

This presentation will provide a brief overview of the CADES project and the Lustre file systems that are deployed. We will discuss how Ansible is used within the CADES project, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using Ansible to manage chroot directories. Example playbooks will be shown to illustrate how they are used in managing the Lustre server root file system images. We will also discuss how Ansible can be used as a day-to-day Lustre administration tool by using playbooks to format a file system or manage OST failover.