tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-291195492008-08-25T08:04:28.531-07:00alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-32611080890582674462008-08-04T11:57:00.000-07:002008-08-25T08:04:28.575-07:00

This past May Cassatt announced availability of demand-based policies, which monitor the changing demand on servers and automatically turn them off when they become idle. The technical publications team is pleased to follow up with the details: what exactly do these policies do, and how do you configure them. Briefly: demand-based policies allow you to measure load on your servers using a

Dorothyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15425990795739007954noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-65920519391410439012008-05-01T13:18:00.000-07:002008-08-03T16:39:11.940-07:00

As our customers scale out their Cassatt Active Response environments, we're finding that a beefier control node is a must for optimum performance. To meet this need, we have upgraded our minimum control node specs to support a configuration with 400 tiers, 400 image-managed nodes, and 400 images. A control node that meets this scalability requirement will work for Cassatt Active Response

Dorothyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15425990795739007954noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-75360479865653833262008-04-02T15:02:00.001-07:002008-08-03T16:52:01.337-07:00

We've seen some support calls where Cassatt Active Response was not auto-discovering servers that were otherwise correctly configured. Turns out that the control node , which you'll remember acts as a DHCP server, had run out of IP addresses. So, the control node fielded the server's DHCP request, but couldn't do anything about it. The visible result was that the server did not get placed in

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-44372352280741490812008-03-04T12:25:00.000-08:002008-03-11T14:39:41.156-07:00

Our recent project work and lab investigations have led us to make a couple of significant changes to our recommended control node configuration that you should be aware of. In summary:Control node operating system is now Red Hat ELAS 4 Update 5.Control node recommended memory is now 2 Gbytes.For the inquisitive, here's a little background on these changes.First, it turns out there was a bug in

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-50503231273799901642008-02-25T08:12:00.001-08:002008-02-25T09:03:35.990-08:00

We've recently introduced a new programmatic interface to Cassatt Active Response—the Cassatt Event Registration Interface, or CERI. Cassatt Active Response tracks all kinds system events in its environment. Using CERI, you can access this event stream and trigger other, automated actions in your environment. Say, for example, you want to populate a site CMDB with inventory data collected by

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-9856675665101955122008-02-08T13:28:00.001-08:002008-02-08T13:47:59.412-08:00

We've just updated the site with new documentation you might be interested in: Sun RSC power controllers - Cassatt Active Response now manages Sun servers via their Remote System Control (RSC) interface. For more info, see Application Node Setup: Sun. SSDK - We've added a few new functions: startTierPersonalization() and completeTierPersonalization(), which support more sophisticated scripted

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-80532162459210161042008-01-15T15:40:00.000-08:002008-01-28T08:54:10.608-08:00

If you're looking through Info Central, it probably won't take long to encounter a reference to Cassatt Active Response's discovery capability. This is the process by which Cassatt Active Response identifies and catalogs 1) a server's power controller and 2) the accompanying application server for use in the CAR environment. Many systems provide some means of discovering resources and assets in

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-7311192565401894932007-12-12T07:38:00.001-08:002007-12-12T08:25:19.514-08:00

While you were sleeping, the Info Central elves updated the site with new docs. These docs and the underlying product support in Cassatt Active Response extend the reach of Cassatt Active Power Management to a new class of systems. Specifically, we've added info on how to set up Sun SPARC and x86 servers that use ALOM and ILOM power control (see Application Node Setup: Sun). Also, we now have

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-89368384826603014702007-11-17T11:56:00.001-08:002007-11-17T11:57:24.777-08:00

Today you'll notice a little makeover of the Info Central site. First, we've published new content to support Cassatt Active Response 5.0. This primarily reflects the new Policy Manager software that automatically powers servers off and on based on user-defined power policies. This is really cool stuff that is available across the Cassatt Active Response 5.0 product line, but is the backbone of

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-58782626328466485162007-11-13T08:16:00.000-08:002007-11-13T08:56:31.978-08:00

Quite awhile ago, long before Cassatt revamped its product line to feature its power savings features, I blogged about how Cassatt's Active Response software could do that (see old blog here). At that time, I assembled a simple power usage calculator to give an idea of how much you might be spending on server power. Since that time, our technical marketing dept. has put together a much more

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-87572082430361147362007-11-04T17:53:00.000-08:002007-11-05T14:08:34.923-08:00

Remember several years ago (okay, I guess maybe it's been 2 or 3 decades now) when Datsun, the Japanese car company, slowly but surely converted their American brand to their corporate name, Nissan? We at Cassatt are undergoing a similar transition in our product branding. As of today, our product, up to now known as Cassatt Collage, is going to be called Cassatt Active Response. And our Web

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-79407993680187785442007-10-09T15:48:00.000-07:002007-10-10T07:37:45.375-07:00

If you're an astute Info Central reader, you may have noticed that Collage 4.2 has added support for HP hardware that uses iLO2 remote management. (See Application Node Setup: HP.) Collage accesses the on-board iLO2 to control power operations on the node. One thing you may want to watch for is that the iLO2 sometimes misreports errors when powering up. What happens is, Collage logs errors from

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-45812941430076163642007-09-28T09:36:00.000-07:002007-09-28T10:01:33.922-07:00

Collage utility computing relies heavily on auto discovery—a feature where Collage automatically recognizes available hardware on known networks and then pools that hardware together for use by applications and services based on their requirements for compute power. To achieve auto discovery, the Collage Controller acts as a DHCP server and fields DHCP requests from application nodes. In some

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-71572896108777729112007-09-19T14:20:00.000-07:002007-09-19T14:25:58.055-07:00

Collage 4.2 now provides several storage options to better fit into your environment. Specifically, Collage 4.2 removes the restriction that Collage software and supporting files all reside on the same file system. Conversely, Collage 4.2 now requires that you separate the Collage database and the Collage system software into separate file systems, which all-in-all, seems like a judicious thing

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-11426538800475023172007-09-04T10:11:00.000-07:002007-09-10T12:54:31.163-07:00

Several weeks ago, I posted a workaround to a little problem with editing the /etc/hosts file. I'm happy to report that our new 4.2 release fixes that, so no longer any need for that workaround (which required editing the /cassatt/etc/hosts file). Go ahead and use the /etc/hosts file you know and love and Collage will respect your entries when it comes along and makes its own entries.

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-71599617723363732012007-08-29T10:45:00.000-07:002007-08-29T11:00:11.915-07:00

If you've checked out the Info Central home page, you can see that Collage V4.2 is now available. This rev features the new Collage QuickConfig capability that you can use to bring application servers under Collage control without having to capture application images. While QuickConfig doesn't provide the full range of Collage automation and dynamic resource allocation, it still guarantees

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-18147780846875273972007-08-10T14:30:00.000-07:002007-08-10T15:33:15.148-07:00

The latest version of Collage adds a nice little feature that provides a detailed build ID string. (Actually, the feature was there before, it was just hard to find.) You can use this to identify the exact version of Collage you are using. This info is available from the footer on the Collage Controller (circled in red), which is accessible from every page in the UI: Clicking that link will

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-45918590394434522642007-07-25T12:23:00.000-07:002007-07-25T12:26:38.982-07:00

If you're using Dell hardware that comes with the latest Dell Remote Access Controller (DRAC 5), pay close attention to required BIOS setup steps when configuring the node for use with Collage: Application Node Setup: Dell If you omit this BIOS setup step, the result is that Collage discovers the DRAC 5 card, but then fails to put the nodes in the free pool. That's because there's a console

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-56909133547057051492007-07-13T11:55:00.000-07:002007-07-13T14:48:27.674-07:00

I'm back after a little 4th of July get-away. Upon my return, ran across this advice regarding use of the hosts file on the control nodes: Turns out, there's a little gotcha in the way Collage copies hosts file info around. So, for now, if you need to modify the hosts file on the control node(s), do so in the /cassatt/etc/hosts file rather than in /etc/hosts. The reason is, when Collage is

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-63790008082207559472007-06-15T11:34:00.000-07:002007-08-06T11:58:37.263-07:00

Whenever Collage fails to log into a network switch, an error is logged and the last text from the switch is part of the error message. So if the switch actually indicates why it is not letting Collage in, that text will be in the log. For the most common network switch connection errors, Collage adds info that attempts to give you a better understanding of what exactly went wrong. This includes

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-79891431826463499302007-06-12T14:08:00.000-07:002007-06-12T14:19:08.933-07:00

The cccoreservice command is a command-line utility for managing the collage-core service on one or two Collage control nodes. It went through a pretty major overhaul back in Collage 3.4, so I thought I'd highlight how it now works. cccoreservice command options On single control node... On dual-control nodes... start Starts the collage-core service on the control node. Makes sure the

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-79566305017406400622007-05-30T08:01:00.000-07:002007-05-30T08:04:54.566-07:00

For most maintenance you need to do on physical hardware in the Collage environment, you simply make your changes (e.g, add memory) and move the node from the Collage maintenance pool back to the Collage discovered pool. Collage then makes the node available for use. However, if you are replacing the motherboard or the primary boot NIC on the node, you need to follow a slightly different

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-11708600618460601872007-05-14T08:16:00.000-07:002007-05-14T08:37:03.842-07:00

By default, Collage logging information is captured in /opt/cassatt/logs/collage-core.log. However, many system administrators like to streamline system management by using syslog to consolidate log info in one location. If you would like to redirect Collage errors, warnings, or actions to your system log file, use this procedure: Edit /etc/sysconfig/syslog and add -r to the SYSLOGD_OPTIONS.

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-45934519053057037022007-05-08T09:31:00.000-07:002007-05-08T11:35:36.449-07:00

In a dual-control node configuration, there are operations procedures (for example, backup and restore) where you need to know which node is the active and which is the standby control node. The instructions to do that are described in the relevant documentation, but I thought it might be good to capture it in this forum as a general reminder. The basic step is to log in to a control node as

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29119549.post-57531218908416511242007-05-01T13:54:00.000-07:002007-05-02T07:26:54.852-07:00

The SSL certificate (the bit of code that guarantees secure web transactions) that is included in Collage expires on May 2, 2007. What does that mean to you? When you log in to the Collage Controller, you will see a popup alert that indicates the certificate has expired. However, you can simply accept the expired certificate and continue. The alert can be a little annoying, but Collage will

alanmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08172180448968484608noreply@blogger.com