by M. Silva,
M. Banikazemi,
M. Butrico,
D. Daly,
S. Guthridge,
J. E. Moreira,
and W. V. Ruggiero
The problem of provisioning servers in a data center environment
includes coordinating access to and sharing of physical resources,
loading servers with the appropriate software images, supporting
storage access to users and applications, and providing basic
monitoring and control services for those servers. We have
developed and adapted systems—Hop-scotch, Sysman, and the
InfiniBand™-attached IBM Storage Area Network (SAN) Volume
Controller (SVC)—that automate the provisioning and monitoring
processes for large collections of servers. Our solution relies on
directory services to implement access control. It uses network
boot disks and managed root disks to control the image of each
server. We leverage the IBM Global Storage Architecture and
SVC to provide storage to users and applications. Finally,
interfaces are provided to access the services both
programmatically and interactively.
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