URL:
Reporter RHNID:
Section: -
Language: en-US (English)
Workaround: None. To work properly, students must run these scripts.

Description: The RH436 Cluster (oops, "High Availability Add-On") course is a good training with one major flaw that severely undermines student entusiasm and participation. The majority of practices require students to reset most or all nodes and run a lab setup script that first rebuilds a full cluster, usually 3 nodes in size. This occurs, at minimum, in the first practice of the chapter, the ending lab, and sometimes in practices of the middle sections also. Students estimate that the setup scripts have installed a new cluster approximately twenty (20) times.

I have posted this as a new Jira, even though another existing Jira is related. In Jira RH436-31, Sreejith Anujan suggested using the "nobarriers" option to quicken the scripts, but that does not mitigate the root cause that all of this is wasted time percieved by students to be tedious and unecessary. The internal developer stated that scripts should take 50-60 seconds each, which is incredulous. In my class this week (HP EliteDesk i5-4670 quad 3.4GHz, 16GB RAM, WD Blue 500GB 7200rpm disk), each script run takes a little more than 10 minutes, meaning that each student has spent approximately 3.5 hours of course time watching resets and initial scripts run. You can hear them sigh and mumble as they start each new practice. I am not exaggerating.

Suggested resolution

Rebuild the images to include the default "basiccluster" build. Resetting the workstaion/nodeY VMs brings back a clean, working standard 3-node cluster with fencing and standard functions working. This will require that workstation and all 4 nodes are reset each time.

The practice and leb setup scripts would then be modified to either add or remove resources and configuration to bring the cluster to the state required to begin this particular exercise.

For a practice requiring a two-node cluster, the script would cleanly delete one node, which would take a total of 30 seconds; much better than building a new two node cluster in 10 minutes.

For a practice building fencing, the setup script would remove the fencing devices in about 30 seconds. For a practice requiring a 4 node cluster, the setup script would add one node in about 30 seconds.