Quattor - Toolsuite für Cluster Management

quattor is a system administration toolkit providing a powerful, portable and modular toolsuite for the automated installation, configuration and management of clusters and farms running UNIX derivates like Linux and Solaris. quattor was started in the scope of the EDG project (2001-2003). Development and maintenance is coordinated by CERN (IT department) in collaboration with other partner institutes (in particular UAM Madrid, IN2P3/LAL, INFN/CNAF and NIKHEF) in the scope of ELFms.

• quattor_installation_howto
• Homepage
• Software Repository

The quattor information model is based on the distinction between the desired state and the actual state. The desired state is registered in a fabric-wide Configuration Database (CDB), using a specially designed configuration language for expressing and validating configurations, composed out of reusable hierarchical building blocks called templates. Configurations are propagated to and cached on the managed nodes.

Subsystems running on the nodes take care of managing software packages and configuring local services:

• The Software Package Management Agent (SPMA) handles local software installations using the system packager (like RPM or PKG). Packages can be stored and managed centrally in Software Repositories (SWRep).
• The Node Configuration Manager (NCM) subsystem configures/reconfigures local system and grid services using a plug-in component framework.
• A subsystem called Automated Installation Infrastructure (AII) takes care of initial node installation, configuring the system installer (KickStart/Anaconda, JumpStart).