ICALEPCS2011 - List of Authors (Provenzano, M.)

Paper

Title

Page

How to Maintain Hundreds of Computers Offering Different Functionalities with Only Two System Administrators

56

R.A. Krempaska, A.G. Bertrand, C.E. Higgs, R. Kapeller, H. Lutz, M. Provenzano
Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland

The Controls section in PSI is responsible for the Control Systems of four Accelerators: two proton accelerators HIPA and PROSCAN, Swiss Light Source SLS and the Free Electron Laser (SwissFEL) Test Facility. On top of that, we have 18 additional SLS beamlines to control. The controls system is mainly composed of the so called Input Output Controllers (IOCs) which require a complete and complex computing infrastructure in order to boot, being developed, debugged and monitored. This infrastructure consists currently mainly of Linux computers like boot server, port server, or configuration server (called save and restore server). Overall, the constellation of computers and servers which compose the control system counts about five hundred Linux computers which can be split into 38 different configurations based on the work each of this system need to provide. For the administration of all this we do employ only two system administrators who are responsible for the installation, configuration and maintenance of those computers. This paper shows which tools are used to squash this difficult task: like Puppet (an open source Linux tool we further adapted) and many in-house developed tools offering an overview about computers, installation status and relations between the different servers / computers.

Slides MOMAU007 [0.384 MB]

Poster MOMAU007 [0.708 MB]

Paper	Title	Page
MOMAU007	How to Maintain Hundreds of Computers Offering Different Functionalities with Only Two System Administrators	56
	R.A. Krempaska, A.G. Bertrand, C.E. Higgs, R. Kapeller, H. Lutz, M. Provenzano Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland
	The Controls section in PSI is responsible for the Control Systems of four Accelerators: two proton accelerators HIPA and PROSCAN, Swiss Light Source SLS and the Free Electron Laser (SwissFEL) Test Facility. On top of that, we have 18 additional SLS beamlines to control. The controls system is mainly composed of the so called Input Output Controllers (IOCs) which require a complete and complex computing infrastructure in order to boot, being developed, debugged and monitored. This infrastructure consists currently mainly of Linux computers like boot server, port server, or configuration server (called save and restore server). Overall, the constellation of computers and servers which compose the control system counts about five hundred Linux computers which can be split into 38 different configurations based on the work each of this system need to provide. For the administration of all this we do employ only two system administrators who are responsible for the installation, configuration and maintenance of those computers. This paper shows which tools are used to squash this difficult task: like Puppet (an open source Linux tool we further adapted) and many in-house developed tools offering an overview about computers, installation status and relations between the different servers / computers.
	Slides MOMAU007 [0.384 MB]
	Poster MOMAU007 [0.708 MB]