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Clustering Software/distribution?

T

TC10284

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 8, 2006
Messages
213
Hey all,

I believe this is the right forum to post this in. If not, forgive me and please move to the correct forum.

I am hoping to setup a cluster on some machines that I have sitting around. They are all Compaq P3 933MHz with around 128 to 384MB of RAM, with 10 to 80GB HDs. I also have spare networking equipment. Hardware isn't a problem for me. Software seems to be causing the issue currently...

I would like to be able to configure these machines to run in a cluster environment. I would prefer the OS to be a Linux distribution, but Windows would work. My OS skill strength is in Windows however. I'm "intermediate" with Linux, but I don't know how to compile applications or kernels from source yet. But I can edit networking config files and other config files using vi/nano.

I have tried PelicanHPC, but I want an option that installs to the HD easily.

OSCAR 5.1 RC1 was a real pain to setup. I ran into numerous errors and finally gave up on the last one (Error: missing dependency:...). The documentation was OK, but it seems to miss some important steps.

I am looking into Condor next.

I was wondering what you guys would suggest. I'd like to be able to use the RAM and hard drive space easily across all cluster nodes.

Thanks for your time! :D
 
What exactly are you looking to do with this setup? Oscar and the like are little more than a pre-selected collection of libraries and utilities to help you run your app, not the app itself. Being able to fully utilize a cluster setup is something that takes years of study in networking and programming. Besides, theres no application that wouldn't run faster on a recent Core2 than your setup.

Now, if I haven't scared you away from the idea yet, heres a well known cluster thats been in use for some time. Theres also a lot of good documentation and links on the site. You're in for a lot of reading and experimentation, but theres plenty of cool things you can do with a cluster.

http://www.extremelinux.info/stonesoup/
 
Xilikon said:
Another nice site to check would be Beowulf.org : http://www.beowulf.org/

Click to expand...

Beowulf.org used to be a great reference, but its was getting pretty stale last time I looked at it. Very little content and dead ends at nearly every click. The real value of the site was the links to existing and well documented clusters in use across the world, but those links are no more.

I also remembered this link I had stashed away. Lots of links to info and resources.

http://www.buyya.com/cluster/


216
 
Thanks for the note, I just tossed the link since I remembered this about linux clustering.

 
alan2308 said:
What exactly are you looking to do with this setup? Oscar and the like are little more than a pre-selected collection of libraries and utilities to help you run your app, not the app itself. Being able to fully utilize a cluster setup is something that takes years of study in networking and programming. Besides, theres no application that wouldn't run faster on a recent Core2 than your setup.

Now, if I haven't scared you away from the idea yet, heres a well known cluster thats been in use for some time. Theres also a lot of good documentation and links on the site. You're in for a lot of reading and experimentation, but theres plenty of cool things you can do with a cluster.

http://www.extremelinux.info/stonesoup/
Click to expand...

You haven't scared me away. I basically just want to set one up for the heck of it because I have the computers and spare networking equipment. It wouldn't be the fastest thing, of course. But I want to utilize spare equipment some way.

I had also planned to try running BOINC on a cluster system. But I do realize that BOINC would perform better on individual machines.

I'm primarily just experimenting at the moment. I'll get more serious when I can get some clustering to work. If things go going decently, I could offer the cluster up for research.
 
FYI, Folding@Home have a SMP client which run on MPICH. This is a kind of clustering software that Stanford used to manage threads across multi cores (instead of multi computers). This is just for your own curiosity ;)

 
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