Presentation
Modernizing HPC Configuration Management
DescriptionHigh-performance computing (HPC) environments require configuration management systems to support diverse infrastructure and operational needs. At the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), we initiated a multi-year transition from Puppet to Ansible to modernize our configuration management across our active HPC clusters. This paper presents the motivations behind the migration, including limitations encountered with Puppet and the advantages of Ansible’s agentless architecture and human-readable YAML-based configuration model.We detail our transition methodology, emphasizing cross-team collaboration, configuration parity, and low operational impact to production systems. Comparative insights highlight key differences in compliance enforcement, inventory visibility, automation workflows, secrets management, and custom module development. Additionally, we share implementation insights regarding community resource gaps, provisioning integration, access constraints, and organizational buy-in.Our experience underscores the importance of deliberate planning and collaborative toolsets in infrastructure modernization.
Author/Presenter
Event Type
Workshop
TimeSunday, 16 November 20259:01am - 9:31am CST
Location276