Moving from CfnCluster to Amazon ParallelCluster - Amazon ParallelCluster
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Moving from CfnCluster to Amazon ParallelCluster

Amazon ParallelCluster is an enhanced version of CfnCluster.

If you currently use CfnCluster, we recommend that you use Amazon ParallelCluster instead and create new clusters with it. Even though you can continue to use CfnCluster, it's no longer being developed, and no new features or functionality will be added.

The main differences between CfnCluster and Amazon ParallelCluster are described in the following sections.

Amazon ParallelCluster CLI manages a different set of clusters

Clusters created with the cfncluster CLI can't be managed with the pcluster CLI. The following commands don't work on clusters created by CfnCluster:

pcluster list
pcluster update cluster_name
pcluster start cluster_name
pcluster status cluster_name

To manage clusters that you created with CfnCluster, you must use the cfncluster CLI.

If you need a CfnCluster package to manage your old clusters, we recommend that you install and use it from a Python virtual environment.

Amazon ParallelCluster and CfnCluster use different IAM custom policies

Custom IAM policies that were previously used for CfnCluster cluster creation can't be used with Amazon ParallelCluster. If you require custom policies for Amazon ParallelCluster, you must create new ones. See the Amazon ParallelCluster guide.

Amazon ParallelCluster and CfnCluster use different configuration files

The Amazon ParallelCluster configuration file resides in the ~/.parallelcluster folder. The CfnCluster configuration file resides in the ~/.cfncluster folder.

If you want to use an existing CfnCluster configuration file with Amazon ParallelCluster, then you must complete the following actions:

  1. Move the configuration file from ~/.cfncluster/config to ~/.parallelcluster/config.

  2. If you use the extra_json configuration parameter, change it as shown.

CfnCluster setting:

extra_json = { "cfncluster" : { } }

Amazon ParallelCluster setting:

extra_json = { "cluster" : { } }

In Amazon ParallelCluster, ganglia is disabled by default

In Amazon ParallelCluster, ganglia is disabled by default. To enable ganglia, complete these steps:

  1. Set the extra_json parameter as shown:

    extra_json = { "cluster" : { "ganglia_enabled" : "yes" } }

  2. Change the head security group to allow connections to port 80.

    The parallelcluster-<CLUSTER_NAME>-MasterSecurityGroup-<xxx> security group must be modified by adding a new security group rule to allow Inbound connection to port 80 from your Public IP. For more information, see Adding rules to a security group in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.