BlueBanquise is an opensource project,
based on the wish to provide a simple but flexible stack to deploy and manage cluster of servers or workstations.
The stack is based on Ansible and Python, and relies heavily on inventory variables precedence mechanism and groups. It was designed in an attempt to be 100% modular.
The stack is based on Ansible and Python, and relies heavily on inventory variables precedence mechanism and groups. It was designed in an attempt to be 100% modular.
Origin of the need
While building a small HPC center in the FabLab La Fabrique du Loch, at Auray – France, we needed something simple, widely compatible, to manage our cluster and our workstations, but also very flexible as we are working with enterprises and universities (some wants Centos, others Ubuntu, others Microsoft Windows, etc).We also wanted something with less scripts as possible, to easily maintain the system and save spare time doing interesting things.
This is how Banquise and then it's spiritual successor BlueBanquise were born.
The stack is linked to the Algoric project.
Objectives
The stack main goal is to be a simple skeleton for other projects.As it relies on Ansible, the structure of BlueBanquise makes it fully modular. Addons, or other tools can be seen as the flesh to make it alive.
The inventory design is also highly flexible, allowing simple configurations by default, but also very exotic ones.
In any cases, and this is mandatory for us, the stack is a semi-automatic tool: system administrator always have a way to force things to act as expected. All automatic parts can be overwritten using Ansible precedence mechanism.