Hardware descriptions

The profiles contain also the description of the node's hardware. This includes the number of CPU chips, the number of cores on each chip, the number and type of each hard disk or RAID controller, the location and many others.

Table of Contents

1. Annotation structures
2. RAM definitions
3. CPU definition
4. Network cards definition
5. RAID controllers and hard disks
6. Deprecated description for hard disks

Annotation structures

Almost all hardware definitions include a generic structure_annotation, which is made of the following fields:

• name the product name
• type the type of product
• model
• manufacturer
• version
• chipset
• serialnumber
• arch tipically, i386 or x86_64
• bus
• clock clock frequency
• lang language
• location physical location

All these fields are optional, so you can use them in any context you need. For instance, you might want to describe a Sun XFire 4100 server with arch x86_64, manufacturer Sun and model XFire 4100.

RAM definitions

RAM structures include, also

• size capacity of the RAM chip
• data_rate an optional and mostly unused field.

Ideally, you should define one RAM entry per RAM module the node has. For instance, if you have 4 modules, 2GB each, you should set

"/hardware/ram" = list (nlist ("capacity", 2*GB, # More annotation fields here),
        nlist ("capacity", 2*GB, # More annotation fields),
        nlist ("capacity", 2*GB, # More annotation fields),
        nlist ("capacity", 2*GB, # More annotation fields));

CPU definition

CPU structures describe one CPU chip.

• speed clock speed. Hey, isn't this redundant with clock from structure_annotation?
• cores amount of cores on this chip. Defaults to 1.

CPUs are described as a list, with at least one element. Your nodes will always have at least one CPU, right?

"/hardware/cpu" = list (nlist (...

Network cards definition

This structure is meant for Ethernet cards, if another type of structure was needed we might have to re-think this.

• hwaddr the MAC address
• driver
• driverrpms
• pxe a boolean indicating if the interface supports PXE
• boot a boolean indicating if this is the interface we want to boot from
• maxspeed can someone from CERN clarify?

These are included inside /hardware/cards/nic and indexed by device name (eth0, eth1...).

RAID controllers and hard disks

They are all modelled inside /hardware/cards, please see ​the full description

Please note that "normal" hard disks, even if they are IDE or SATA (as you see them on your desktop) should be described here.

Deprecated description for hard disks

A much less accurate description is still available, but is strongly discouraged. It is described here for completeness, and kept for backwards compatibility. Please don't use it for new profiles.

Hard disks are described as members of /hardware/harddisks, but keep no information on their exact port or the RAID controller they belong to. All they have is their interface (IDE, SATA, SAS, SCSI...), their size and their name, from the operating system's point of view. This is, "sda", "hda"...