CSM and NIM: day 1

[sawyl]

First day of a course on IBM's Cluster Systems Management product and Network Information Manager. Sadly, neither product is particularly interesting. CSM is just a bunch of commands to manipulate the hardware states of the system coupled with configuration file management, while NIM is a pretty basic install system based on the twin horrors of bootp and tftp.

There were some vaguely intersting comments about running the two products in cluster ready mode — essentially a set of baroque hacks to work around various lacks in the way that the HMCs work — but otherwise, pretty unexciting.

Maybe things will improve tomorrow.