[cfarm-users] Future of cfarm186/cfarm187/cfarm188 at OSUOSL

[Baptiste Jonglez]

On 15-11-25, Baptiste Jonglez via cfarm-users wrote:
> As some of you may know, OSUOSL is moving to a new datacenter.
> (...)
> 
> However, the three x86 machines (cfarm186, 187, 188) are getting quite
> old, so OSUOSL is looking at replacing them with newer hardware.  We
> probably won't be able to keep as many machines.
> 
> Here are two possible options to start the discussion:
> 
> - option 1: one much bigger machine, bare metal.  Which (single) OS makes the most sense?
> 
> - option 2: several virtual machines.  Which (multiple) OS would be useful?
> 
> Here, "big" means dual-socket Intel Xeon Platinum 8280, so 56 cores / 112
> threads, with 768 GB RAM.

So, it seems we should rather go with option 2: have many small virtual
machines instead of one big physical x86 server.

I see three ways to run that:

(a) ask OSUOSL to use their OpenStack cluster: it delegates physical
    maintenance to competent people.  Also, each VM can have its own public
    IP address, which simplifies things a lot.  However, it would only work
    with "common" operating systems.  I will ask OSUOSL what OS they can support.

(b) run virtualization ourselves on one of the big OSUOSL physical servers.
    However, it requires more maintenance on our end (e.g. maintaining a
    Proxmox setup), and we probably won't be able to have a separate IP per
    VM.  Also, it would waste hardware resources: even 10 VMs would be far
    from filling up one server.

(c) find somebody that already has the expertise and infrastructure to run
    VMs with unusual OS, and ask if they could provide some for cfarm.
    Ideally, each VM would need its own public IP address.

I would rather go with (a) for common OS and (c) for uncommon ones, and
avoid (b).


Here is the OS wishlist collected from the thread:

- Haiku, Minix, Hurd and Sortix (especially Hurd)
- Trisquel
- Illumos distributions (OpenIndiana, OmniOS, Tribblix)
- Fedora or Gentoo

Baptiste