The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
Workshop: HPC Systems Professionals Workshop (HPCSYSPROS25)
Authors: William Glick (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Abstract: High-performance computing (HPC) environments require configuration management systems to support diverse infrastructure and operational needs. At the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), we initiated a multi-year transition from Puppet to Ansible to modernize our configuration management across our active HPC clusters. This paper presents the motivations behind the migration, including limitations encountered with Puppet and the advantages of Ansible’s agentless architecture and human-readable YAML-based configuration model.We detail our transition methodology, emphasizing cross-team collaboration, configuration parity, and low operational impact to production systems. Comparative insights highlight key differences in compliance enforcement, inventory visibility, automation workflows, secrets management, and custom module development. Additionally, we share implementation insights regarding community resource gaps, provisioning integration, access constraints, and organizational buy-in.Our experience underscores the importance of deliberate planning and collaborative toolsets in infrastructure modernization.
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