Hi CentOS folks!

A few days ago, I announced this to the Linux-Clustering mailing list. I think it might be of interest to some on this list, too, as most people who use CentOS are more "roll your own" types. This project was actually developed and tested on CentOS 5.4 x86_64. :)

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I wanted to announce a new open hardware, open source cluster fence device:

Node Assassin - http://nodeassassin.org

After four months and a lot of help from friends at http://hacklab.to, the first version is done and ready for the lime light! (warts and all)

It fully implements the FenceAgentAPI, including independent sensing of a Node's on/off status. There is a simple installer and uninstaller that has been tested on CentOS 5.x and should work on any system supporting Red Hat style clustering.

It is built as a shield for the Arduino development platform and uses entirely "off the shelf" parts that can be ordered online or bought at most electronic parts shops. The software and build instructions are fully documented.

The goal of this project is to let people build very inexpensive clusters on commodity hardware. The current version supports four nodes. If you want more nodes, simply build a second Node Assassin! The fence agent supports multiple simultaneous Node Assassins. It would also work wonderfully as a secondary fence device.

This is my first "official" open source project, so I would love to hear some feedback even if you don't plan to use it yourself. :)

If you don't want to build your own, I am working with an embedded systems engineer in the hope of having pre-built units available in the next few months. They will support 8 to 64 nodes each depending on the model. If you think you would be interested in this, please let me know. Whether these see the light of day or not largely depends on the feedback I get.

Thanks for your time reading this!