Is there interest in a talk on clustering?

Madison Kelly linux-5ZoueyuiTZhBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org
Thu Dec 17 19:51:25 UTC 2009


William Muriithi wrote:
> Morning Madi
> 
> 2009/12/17 Madison Kelly <linux-5ZoueyuiTZhBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org <mailto:linux-5ZoueyuiTZhBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>>:
>  > Before you answer, I want to mention a concern...
>  >
>  > I've been doing a fair bit on clustering lately, and have successfully
>  > gotten two-node clusters working designed to run virtual machines 
> that can
>  > be moved between nodes on the fly. I think I could see this being of
>  > potential interest to TLUG as a talk.
> 
> I think there would be interest. I for one would be very happy to hear 
> about it

Woot. Anyone else?

>  > However,
>  >
>  > It's a sufficiently involved topic that, given the two hour window of a
>  > talk, I don't think I'd be able to cover everything needed to 
> actually build
>  > a cluster. For this reason, I've been debating offering it up as a talk.
>  > I've been thinking about ways to make a talk useful, and am still not 
> sure
>  > how I could do that... So the second part of this question is; Given a
>  > limited time frame, what would you guys like to hear about with regard to
>  > clustering? What would be helpful?
> 
> This is definitely not a simple talk. I think there is no way you can 
> present it in details all across, especially as it involve lots of 
> technologies.
> I mean, it involve virtualization, networking (VRRP), LVM or cluster 
> file system, DBRD or SAN storage just to name a few. The only way you 
> can deliver it in time is to generalize some of the content.
> 
> If I was in your shoe, I would skim over simple stuff, things that tend 
> to work easily and spend most of the time were really hard to get going. 
> When I mean skim, I mean mention it just enough that one can tell how 
> its related to the main talk, alternatives and their 
> advantages/disadvantages etc.
> 
> The meat of the talk I assume would be DBRD and HA. For these two 
> services, you can go deep as explaining every section of the 
> configuration file, so the lion share of time should go toward these two 
> in my humble opinion And to be frank, they also tend to be the hardest 
> to get going, all the more justifying the extra effort needed there. Ok, 
> I admit cluster file system is also a pain, but one has to make a choice.
> 
> You can also consider sending out the presentation before the talk - 
> people can look at it and be up to speed when you are presenting. Or 
> else share your notes on the project at the end of presentation and 
> everyone can look at the detailed stuff  later and fill up the gaps. In 
> short, the listerners also have to do a bit of homework as the time will 
> not be enough for very detailed talk.

I think I'd approach the first talk from the point of view of building a 
  DRBD+LVM 2-node cluster running Redhat cluster software on CentOS 5 
hosting Xen virtual machines.

I like the idea of glossing over certain things in the talk, but I think 
I will create a more detailed document that covers everything in proper 
detail. I can already think of the major "gotchas" that caused me to 
burn so much time getting things going.

>  >
>  > Anyway, I'm just throwing this out here at this point to get some 
> feedback
>  > and to see if there is any real interest. If there is, and I can think of
>  > something useful to cover, I'd probably be looking at an April talk.
>  >
>  > Madi
> 
> Anyway, thats just my 2 cents

It's appreciated. I've asked to be booked in for May, but that is still 
contingent on others showing interest. It's a topic sufficiently in a 
corner that there may not be broad enough interest in a generalized 
group like TLUG. I suspect there will be, but I'd rather not make that 
assumption. :)

If it doesn't happen in TLUG, I've contemplated hosting my own little 
(free, obviously) workshop on clustering. I suspect I could talk my boss 
into letting me use some office space on some Saturday. :P

Madi
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