You can still ping the nodes in the plate.
And pull in addition to information about packages, info about hardware (for example, via lshw with the-xml) will be the inventory of iron.
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Info about packages and hardware is convenient to assemble in the background cron-om, and for the server to parse and put into database.
It is still possible for clusters to support wakeuponlan — to make changes in the init script to the client (to allow the "awakening" package) and to Wake from the server or "live" nodes in the grid.
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The same of the old hardware can then be used as variables for configuration: for example, the mac address setevoj: for example, you can make an array eth-addresses={"eth0": "00:11:22:33:44:55", "eth1": "11:22:33:44:55"}
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This is useful if the config write with inserts bash or another language.