454 and cluster operating systems - patching Fedora

[rglover]

Hi everyone,

We got our 454 and the titanium cluster about 3 months ago and we're having some issues with the 454, cluster and their operating systems. Our IT guys would be much happier if the operating systems were patched up to the latest versions. However, Roche have said that patching either OS will void the warranty.

We're a medium/high security government institute and our IT guys are getting pretty jumpy about the out of date OS's - has anyone had the same issues? Is there another solution other than isolating the cluster and instrument in a separate subnet (as Roche are suggesting)?

Cheers,
Rachel

[nickloman]

We isolate our cluster on a private VLAN which can only be accessed by VPN.

If you don't want to do that, I think your only solution would be to accept that you will void the warranty and just reinstall the cluster from scratch. Or chuck out the cluster and do it on your existing systems.

You can download the Roche software and install it easily enough on a fresh Linux OS install. The cluster runs a fairly simple grid configuration which wouldn't be hard to replicate (for a competent Linux sysadm, not an average user).

If you wanted to be really sneaky, you could create disk images for each machine in the cluster, store the images somewhere, go wild on the cluster and then if you ever did run into problems you could restore the cluster to its original factory state before Roche came to check up on it! That's a theoretical suggestion BTW

[nickloman]

I should say, regardless of whether the OS is patched, it is probably good practice to isolate Linux servers from the outside world, unless they are a dedicated firewall/router box.

[rglover]

Thanks for the info - it's much appreciated!

To the best of my knowledge they're both isolated from the outside world though (networks are a little over my head), but the out of date-ness of them is worrying our IT guys (for reasons I'm not entirely sure).