ConMan is a tool used for connecting to remote consoles and collecting console logs. These node logs can then be used for various administrative purposes, such as troubleshooting node boot issues.
ConMan runs on the system as a containerized service. It runs in a set of Docker containers within Kubernetes pods named cray-console-operator and cray-console-node. ConMan can be configured to encrypt usernames and passwords. Node console logs are stored locally within the cray-console-operator pod in the /var/log/conman/ directory, as well as being collected by the System Monitoring Framework (SMF).
In previous releases, the entire service was contained in the cray-conman pod, and both logs and interactive access were handled through that single pod. Starting with version 1.5, the logs can be accessed through the cray-console-operator pod, but interactive console access is handled through one of the cray-console-node pods. There are multiple cray-console-node pods, scaled to the size of the system.