1. I'd like to go diskless. I've never done this before (the other two
clusters are...diskful?). I've used Fedora on both of the previous
clusters. Is this a good choice for diskless? Any advice on where to
start with diskless or operating system choices?
I prefer diskless installs:
- NFS root: fast, can be RO, no significant server load.
- node-specific files on tmpfs: hardly any - pidfiles mostly.
- local disk for swap, /tmp: disks are cheap and fast, why not?
such an approach is really nicely scalable and very pleasant to
maintain. a diskful cluster, by comparison, is often annoying:
disk failures actually matter, and it's not that hard for nodes
to get out of sync. systemimager does a good job of reimaging nodes,
but it's still not quite as "liberating" as just resetting a node,
knowing it's ephemeral...
2. Given my budget (about 20K), I plan on going with GigE on about 24
nodes. Am I right in thinking that faster network interconnects are
just too expensive for this budget?
Greg's right: buy the right interconnect, not just the cheapest.
3. I'll be spending most of my cluster's time diagonalizing large
matrices. I plan on using ScaLAPACK eventually; currently I just use
LAPACK/ATLAS and do individual matrices on each node. The only thing
my experience with scalapack and diagonalization is with monster-sized
sparse matrices, which seem to be fairly latency-sensitive. if your
workload is anything like that, gigabit isn't going to scale well,
at least with a conventional mpi+tcp stack. (I'm looking forward to
the OpenMX stack for this reason.)
* Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz ($280)
* 8 GB (4 X 2 GB) DDR2 800 (~$200)
did you consider AMD? "large matrices" makes me think of memory balance
(bandwidth per flop), where AMD normally leads Intel.
The motherboard does NOT have integrated video. Will I need video
output? Can you even build a node without it?
this is a bios issue: will the board boot without a video card?
I guess you can try configuring it with the card, then remove the card
and see if it still boots. I would make sure you can't get integrated
video - these days, such boards are often cheaper.
motherboards with adequate support for 8GB memory and 1333 FSB don't
have video.
I would also consider AMD, which has lots of integrated-video options.
seems like a waste. From reading around, it seems like there is no
advantage really to DDR3 memory...is that right? Any advice on the
power savings, probably some headroom in clock, but it's really at
the early-adopter stage, I think.
regards, mark hahn.
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