perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Brian Tierney <>]

On May 15, 2013, at 2:24 PM, Robert V. Bolton 
<>
 wrote:

> I just want to elaborate a little on what I'm trying to accomplish by 
> deploying a perfSONAR box without using the toolkit. I'm in the process of 
> trying to figure out how to deploy a number of server to test both 
> bandwidth and latency through out a large geographical area. During this 
> process I've discovered a few problems I need to solve that aren't 
> currently being addressed by the perfSONAR toolkit. Here is a list of the 
> challenges I've run into:
> 
> 1. Server deployment and centralized configuration management.

Bob:


Have you looked at the new "Mesh config" stuff?

https://code.google.com/p/perfsonar-ps/wiki/MeshConfigurationInstallation


> 2. Creating a centralized measurement archive
> 3. Central display of throughput / latency graphs

Have you looked at "MadDash" for this?

https://code.google.com/p/perfsonar-ps/wiki/MaDDashInstall

Hopefully these will be useful.

We have plans to bundle things to make this sort of use case easier, but cant 
yet commit to when this will be ready.

> 
> In addressing these challenges I've come up with a few ideas, but I'm 
> always open to more suggestions. For the first problem I was thinking about 
> deploying a base CentOS 6 image using Cobbler and using a post-install 
> script to add the EPEL and Internet2 repos, install the web100 kernel, and 
> install the salt minion client. Once I had these images installed I was 
> going to use the SatlStack to mange packages and config files. I've yet to 
> figure out how to accomplish my two other goals.  For those of you who are 
> using a centralized measurement archive how are you accomplishing this? Are 
> there any pitfalls to watch out for? Are you able to leverage this 
> centralized measurement archive for graphing? Are you able to accomplish 
> this using the perfSONAR toolkit?
> 
> 
> 
> Alan Whinery wrote:
>> Also, if it's not already on your RADAR  -- browse
>> 
>> http://software.internet2.edu
>> 
>> 
>> What Jason says is pretty much the ticket for the holistic solution,
>> installing packages may be useful for what you want to achieve, and
>> installing things piecemeal is very instructive about the innards of
>> perfSONAR in a way that the turnkey pSPT solution isn't.  (For one
>> thing, it would instill an appreciation for pSPT).
>> 
>> On 5/15/2013 8:54 AM, Jason Zurawski wrote:
>> 
>>> Hey Robert;
>>> 
>>> We don't have a complete guide for how to do this, but there is some 
>>> information here that will be useful:
>>> 
>>>   
>>> http://psps.perfsonar.net/start.html
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Those that have taken this road before have noted that it can be 
>>> problematic when attempting to use some of the RPMs due to version 
>>> mismatches and the like (particularly if you are starting with something 
>>> that != CentOS 5/6).  To prevent headaches we would recommend just 
>>> sticking with a pSPT if you want all the pSPT functionality.  If you plan 
>>> to just install a tool or two (like BWCTL and it's related libraries), 
>>> the RPM method should work fine. 
>>> 
>>> Thanks;
>>> 
>>> -jason
>>> 
>>> On May 15, 2013, at 2:47 PM, "Robert V. Bolton" 
>>> <>
>>> 
>>>  wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Hello,
>>>> 
>>>> I'm looking to build a perfSONAR box without using the toolkit, but I 
>>>> can't seem to find any documentation on how to go about doing this. Do I 
>>>> just need to add the I2 repos and use the web100 kernel and then install 
>>>> the packages I need, or is it a little more complicated than that? 
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> Robert V. Bolton
>>>> Systems Administrator 
>>>> University of Utah
>>>> Center for High Performance Computing
>>>> 801-528-8233 | 
>>>> 
>>>>  
>>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Robert V. Bolton
> Systems Administrator 
> University of Utah
> Center for High Performance Computing
> 801-528-8233 | 
> 
>  
>