Background
Change Management Control (CMC) is a continuous process of ensuring system changes are introduced in a controlled and coordinated manner to minimise service disruptions.
The implementation and maintenance of lengau involves integrating many elements e.g. compute nodes, parallel file systems, fast networks, provisioning and configuration systems. The CHPC needed a platform to
- Test updates, upgrades, provisioning and configuration options. For example, High Availability (HA) and Failover.
- Test fairness policies. For example job scheduling and data storage
- Development of new features.
- Enable collaboration between Users and CHPC to test application behaviour, excluding performance, under different system configurations and provide the CHPC with input before the changes enter the production environment.
Without the test cluster (from now on referred to CMC cluster) the CHPC cannot implement a CMC system where changes are proposed, tested, approved and finally implemented on the production cluster. The approval process without a CMC cluster is based on theory and not practical experience. This increases the risk to smooth service delivery.
The CMC cluster is the platform where CMC actions are evaluated in order to gather enough information to submit a change request for the production environment. The process eliminates uncertainty and raises confidence in system operations which leads to delivering a reliable service to the user community.
CMC Workflow
- Submit a change request to access the CMC cluster
- Approval and Scheduling process
- Work on the CMC. See User Guide
- Submit a change report from the CMC cluster work
- Acceptance and Implementation on lengau
