Roman O. Kostromin

Matrosov Institute for System Dynamics and Control Theory of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

The paper discusses the problem of preparing a computing environment for large-scale scientific experiments in the process of continuous integration of applied and system software. The environment is used both for launching scientific applications and for studying the functioning of digital twins of infrastructure objects. Such an environment is characterized by dynamic changes in the composition of resources, their characteristics, and requirements for them. Environment resources include computers, servers, virtual machines, and microcomputers. We need universal tools to automate the configuration of such resources. A comparative analysis of software configuration management tools (such as Chef, Ansible, Puppet, and SaltStack) of computational nodes in a heterogeneous environment is being performed. These tools are intended for automating the configuration of different nodes. Such automation reduces the setup time of nodes and increases the reliability of computations by minimizing the number of software and hardware failures, associated with the human factor in the manual configuration process. The considered tools are the basis for the further development of the instrumental complex for building an environment that provides the conditions for the functioning of digital twins of nature protection equipment. Based on the results of the comparative analysis and requirements of this framework, the Ansible framework was selected for further integration into the chain of continuous integration of applied and system software. Practical experiments have shown the advantages of using Ansible in comparison with other systems of a similar purpose.

software tools, resource management, distributed computing environment, virtualized resources, configuration management automation, digital twin