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system administration toolsuite 
Note: This web site is obsolete.
Please go to http://www.quattor.org
Introduction
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 (including
BARC,
BEGrid,
IN2P3/LAL, INFN/CNAF,
NIKHEF, Trinity
College Dublin, UAM Madrid
and others).
Design and Architecture
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:
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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).
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The Node Configuration Manager (NCM) subsystem configures/reconfigures local
system and grid services using a plug-in component framework.
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A subsystem called Automated Installation Infrastructure (AII) takes care
of initial node installation, configuring the system installer (KickStart/Anaconda,
JumpStart).
For more information about the quattor architecture, please check the
links in the 'documentation' tab.
Note that Monitoring is not part of quattor, but handled by other tools eg. the
ELFms monitoring system (LEMON).
Status and Availability
The quattor subsystems are available, as well as installation
documentation.
The primary
platform is Linux (in particular Scientific Linux/RH Linux), but platform independence is a design principle.
A proof-of-concept Solaris port (done by
CERN IT/PS
with support from SUN Microsystems) is
available (check
here
for details).
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Most quattor components are being used in production at the
CERN computer centre (CERN
IT/FIO), managing more than 4300 nodes (CPU worker nodes, tape and
disk servers, infrastructure servers)
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Other sites (Trinity College, NIKHEF, IN2P3/LAL, UAM Madrid, INFN/CNAF,
BEGrid) are
using or deploying quattor for managing production fabrics.
Grid Systems
A
community driven taskforce, the
Quattor Working Group (QWG), has been set up by LCG GDB (Grid Deployment Board)
to develop and maintain a common set of templates allowing to install and
configure grid middleware services with Quattor. This development is using
standard Quattor infrastructure and components. It relies on Quattor advanced
features to provide a service oriented management of the middleware and share
much of the effort of maintaining grid middleware configuration.
See also the 'Software' and 'News' tab for updates.
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