Cluster Administration Tips
While implementing and managing a powerful and complex cluster environment can seem like a daunting task, you can make your life much easier and your users more productive by sticking to a few simple rules. Here’s a guide.
Thursday, June 29th, 2006
While implementing and managing a powerful and complex cluster can seem like a daunting task, you can make your life much easier and your users more productive by sticking to a few simple rules.
Help Your Users Help Themselves
Educated cluster users are happy users, and happy users make for happy administrators. Moreover, educated clusters users are more productive, which frees administrators to focus on higher-level problems.
Administrators often notice that shortly after users begin working with a cluster, similar questions start to pop up. Although it requires an initial investment of your time, it’s a good idea to offer a series of short classes and tutorials to familiarize your users with their cluster. It’s also a good idea to provide all notes, examples, and references online, where the material can readily be accessed on-demand.
A user reference web site should include a series of walkthroughs, demonstrating common scenarios or workflows that are likely to be performed on a regular basis. For example, the site should include examples for using special compilers, submitting jobs, monitoring jobs, and even a short tutorial on debugging. Make your walkthroughs as complete as possible. The site should be updated frequently, especially when any software is changed or added. The general rule is to post a notice when any change affects the way your users interact with the cluster.
