To minimise costs and downtime, many HPC compute nodes do not have local disks, but only keep the operating system in RAM. This type of deployment requires special tools to create an image that can be loaded into the RAM of a compute node.

Students should learn how to create stateless node images for HPC clusters. They should be able to use provisioning software to create and configure such images. They should know how to customize stateless node images.

• Able to prepare the head node to deploy stateless node images
• Build bootable stateless node images on the head node using chroot or containers
• Setup network configuration of stateless nodes interfaces (Ethernet and High-Speed)
• Configure and start required services on stateless nodes
• Able to deploy stateless images to cluster nodes

• Markus Hilger
• Peter Grossöhme
• HPC Engineers @ Megware