[Ci-users] AltArch support in CI (status update)

Fri Jul 14 14:25:11 UTC 2017
Fabian Arrotin <arrfab at centos.org>

Hi,

Just starting a thread on the list so that various projects having a
need to test their builds on AltArch (aarch64/ppc64/ppc64le) within CI
are aware of the following :

Thanks to Brian, who coordinated with several folks, we'll be able soon
to provide access to aarch64/ppc64/ppc64le nodes within ci.centos.org.

So far we have configured/deployed/tested ppc64/ppc64le in the
environment, so that we can automate the whole thing happening behind
the scene (basically ansible being called for this, the same way it's
actually done for x86_64).

The last thing to do is now to make Duffy
(https://wiki.centos.org/QaWiki/CI/Duffy) aware of those "other arches"
nodes to be able to
- hand over those nodes on specific request
- reinstall those automatically by calling correct playbooks

Worth noting that due to the amount of physical nodes for those
AltArches, we'll not be able to provide you access to bare metal nodes,
but rather to VMs running on those (at least for ppc64/ppc64le).

That shouldn't be a problem as we'll be able to distribute resources so
that you'll have multiple vcpus per VM, and for Power8, our hypervisors
are installed with CentOS 7 ppc64le, that uses the kvm_hv module. That
then means that it's possible to use nested virt (if needed) as it will
then use the kvm_pr for this, slower, but works
(http://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms/POWER)

If you have remark/comments, feel free !

-- 
Fabian Arrotin
The CentOS Project | http://www.centos.org
gpg key: 56BEC54E | twitter: @arrfab

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