[Clusterusers] Rebuilding the cluster

[Wm. Josiah Erikson]

Hi guys,
     It's been a couple of years since I rebuilt the cluster, and I'm 
starting to have issues with support for more modern software on the 
older versions of, well, everything, that we have on the cluster, and 
they just came out with a new version of ROCKS that has all the latest 
updates, and it seems like, as the year comes to a close, it's a good 
time (for me, maybe you'd want to wait for another few weeks) to think 
about when during this summer would be best to rebuild the cluster.
     I have a shiny new head node with 32GB of RAM ready to install, 
too, thanks to Mt. Holyoke. Best for me would be sometime between now 
and July 1. Other votes? The actual downtime of the cluster would 
probably be a day or two, plus lots of growing pains as I re-install and 
reconfigure everything, as there isn't really much of an upgrade process 
- it's almost like starting from scratch every time. So, I'd say figure 
a week until we're back up and fully functional.

-- 
-----
Wm. Josiah Erikson
Head, Systems and Networking
Hampshire College
Amherst, MA 01002