How to manage several Linux workstation like a cluster?

Posted by Richard Zak on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Richard Zak
Published on 2012-12-04T23:04:17Z Indexed on 2012/12/04 23:05 UTC
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Filed under:

linux

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ubuntu

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cluster

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workstation-management

How does one go about managing a lab of Linux workstations? I'd like for users to be able to log in, run their GUI apps (LibreOffice, Firefox, Eclipse, etc), and for the computers to be able to be used as compute nodes (OpenMPI). This part I'm fine with.

But how can I centrally deploy a new software package or upgrade an installed package? How can I reload the entire OS on a given node, as if these workstations were part of a super computing cluster? Is there a nice program to help with setting up PXE booting and image management, and remotely managing packages? Ideally such a system would work with Ubuntu. If there isn't a nice package, how could this be set up manually?

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