Software Deployment on Network Storage Based Systems

software deployment, software installation, diskless, network storage This report briefly summarizes a number of recent investigations related to software deployment on network storage based systems that our team recently performed. A specific context in which this was investigated was for a pool of general-purpose servers in a single data center that are to be allocated among different applications and/or different customers according to demand or level of service purchased. Separating software installations from server machines increases the modularity of the data center, such that the appropriate level of compute power can be more easily provisioned for a specific software environment and the available compute power can be more efficiently allocated among software environments. A number of additional capabilities and concerns unique to “diskless” software deployment are discussed, as are general topics in improving the modularity and flexibility by which software packages are installed, configured, combined into software stacks, and shared among servers in cluster environments.