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https://github.com/warewulf/warewulf

Warewulf is a stateless and diskless container operating system provisioning system for large clusters of bare metal and/or virtual systems.
https://github.com/warewulf/warewulf

clusters containers hpc provisioning stateless warewulf

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Warewulf is a stateless and diskless container operating system provisioning system for large clusters of bare metal and/or virtual systems.

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README 

        
# warewulf v4



![Warewulf](warewulf-logo.png)



#### Quick Links:



* [Website](https://warewulf.org)

* [Documentation](https://warewulf.org/docs)

* [Download / Releases](http://github.com/warewulf/warewulf/releases)

* [Slack](http://warewulf.slack.com/)

* [Support](https://ciq.com/products/warewulf)



## About Warewulf



### History



For over two decades, Warewulf has powered HPC systems around the

world. From simple “under the desk” clusters to large institutional

systems at HPC centers as well as enterprises who rely on performance

critical computing.



Through the evolution of Warewulf, we have seen various iterations

provisioning models starting from CDROM / ISO images to Etherboot

(predecessor to PXE), then PXE, and more recently iPXE, but even

during these different bootloaders, Warewulf in it’s heart, has always

been first and foremost a stateless provisioning system (e.g. the

operating system node image is not written to any persistent storage

and rather it boots from the network directly into a runtime system).



Warewulf v3 has been in production for over 6 years now as it has

stabilized into a very solid and full featured solution. But over the

last few years, there have been many innovations in Enterprise

technologies which can (and should) be leveraged as part of

Warewulf. Additionally, some of the lessons learned from Warewulf v3

architecture should be rolled into an updated architecture for

provisioning management.



### Warewulf v4



Leveraging this legacy of provisioning and cluster management brings

us to where we are today. The next generation of Warewulf. Warewulf v4

is a complete rewrite in GoLang, taking in the legacy of what we've

come to expect with Warewulf, bringing it into the present, and

looking out into the future.



Warewulf v4 combines ultra scalability, flexibility, and simplicity

with being light weight, non-intrusive, and a great tool for

scientists and seasoned system administrators alike. Warewulf empowers

you to scalably and easily manage thousands of compute resources.



### Architecture



One of the design tenants of Warewulf is how to scalably administrate

many thousands of compute nodes. Generally speaking, operating system

state introduce a surface for potential discrepancies and version

creep between nodes and thus Warewulf has always gone with the "single

system image" approach to clustered operating system management.  This

means that you can have a single management node "image". For the last

20 years, we've been calling this a Virtual Node File System (VNFS),

but in hindsight, this is a container.



At its core, Warewulf v4 focuses on what has made Warewulf so widely

loved: simplicity, ultra scalable, lightweight, and an easy to manage

solution built for both scientists and seasons system administrators

to be able to design a highly functional yet easy to maintain cluster

no matter how big or small or customized it needs to be.



## iPXE



Warewulf uses iPXE for network boot. Typically iPXE is provided by the

operating system; but the iPXE binaries can be built with

`scripts/build-ipxe.sh`. This script accepts command-line arguments that are

passed to the underlying `make` process. e.g.,



```bash



echo "#!ipxe

echo Tagging with vlan 1000

vcreate --tag 1000 net0 autoboot || shell" >vlan-1000.ipxe



sh scripts/build-ipxe.sh EMBED=$(readlink -f vlan-1000.ipxe)

```



By default, `build-ipxe.sh` will attempt to write iPXE builds to

`/usr/local/share/ipxe/`. This path can be specified using the `DESTDIR`

environment variable. Other supported environment variables include

`IPXE_BRANCH` and `TARGETS`.



```bash



IPXE_BRANCH=master TARGETS=bin-arm64-efi/snponly.efi DESTDIR=. sh scripts/build-ipxe.sh

```



Update `warewulf.conf` to use locally-built iPXE.



```

tftp:

  enabled: true

  systemd name: tftp

  ipxe:

    00:09: /usr/local/share/ipxe/bin-x86_64-efi-snponly.efi

    00:00: /usr/local/share/ipxe/bin-x86_64-pcbios-undionly.kpxe

    00:0B: /usr/local/share/ipxe/bin-arm64-efi-snponly.efi

    00:07: /usr/local/share/ipxe/bin-x86_64-efi-snponly.efi

```