Stacki is a

computer cluster A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software. The comp ...

software product from the company StackIQ, released as

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

Description

StackIQ was originally named Clustercorp when it was founded in 2006. Its first product was a commercial version of a

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

called the

Rocks Cluster Distribution Rocks Cluster Distribution (originally NPACI Rocks) is a Linux distribution intended for high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. It was started by National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure and the San Diego Supercompute ...

. Originally based in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

, co-founders included Mason Katz and chief executive Tim McIntire. In 2011, the company re-incorporated as StackIQ and moved to the

La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. La Jolla is surrounded on ...

district in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

. A round of

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

funding in April and October 2014 raised about $6 million. By then it was located in

Solana Beach, California Solana Beach (''Solana'', Spanish for "warm wind") is a coastal city in San Diego County, California. Its population was at 12,941 at the 2020 U.S. Census, up from 12,867 at the 2010 Census. History The area was first settled by the San Dieg ...

. In August 2016, Pervez Choudhry replaced McIntire as chief executive. A product called StackIQ

cluster manager Within cluster and parallel computing, a cluster manager is usually backend graphical user interface (GUI) or command-line interface (CLI) software that runs on a set of cluster nodes that it manages (in some cases it runs on a different server or ...

was renamed StackIQ Boss in February 2015. Stacki works on several servers at the same time, so it takes about as long to provision any number of servers. The system allows installations via the

Preboot Execution Environment In computing, the Preboot eXecution Environment, PXE (most often pronounced as ''pixie'', often called PXE Boot/''pixie boot''.) specification describes a standardized client–server environment that boots a software assembly, retrieved from ...

(PXE), and supports both an “all servers that boot on this network” and an “all servers in this spreadsheet” method of installations. So if the servers to be installed are on an isolated network, a Stacki tool called insert-ethers can be run to grab each machine that boots on the network and add it to Stacki, commencing an installation if needed. If the servers to be installed are on a shared network, then loading a spreadsheet of machines to install tells Stacki which ones it should install. Stacki uses a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

to manage variables for use during installation. Variables can be defined by individual server, installation type, or globally, and can be manipulated via spreadsheets or command line. Networking, for example, can be managed with variables. A machine can be configured with multiple network cards on multiple networks with varying routes and open/closed ports. Stacki was released in June 2015. The StackIQ company was acquired by

Teradata Teradata Corporation is an American software company that provides cloud database and analytics-related software, products, and services. The company was formed in 1979 in Brentwood, California, as a collaboration between researchers at Caltech a ...

on June 30, 2017, for an undisclosed amount.

References

{{Reflist Free software Cluster computing