Hi Tomislav,
thanks for the reply, and thanks to ed in 92626, too, for the url's
provided.
So, Tomislav, i got a cluster running, i dont know if it was i the
beowuld default configurations, but i got it running with serveral
howtos that i found o the web.
I got it running with LAM-MPI and PVM. I had 3 machines, an Intel Core 2
Duo and two Pentium 4 HT, all with intel motherboard and 2GB RAM each.
The test that i made with some binaries of LAM-MPI and PVM got good
results but couldnt get the performance result, i didnt made any test
for that.
I was pretending to build a cluster with high number of processors and
a lot of memory, so i could build a XEN server inside this cluster, and
create a virtual machine to use all this resource, but seems that this
is not possible.
I cant get the xen to work with distributed processor, can i?
Byt the way, thanks a lot!
Thank you all!
Tony Miranda.
On 10/23/2009 04:56 PM, tomislav.ma...@gmx.com wrote:
Hello Tony,
I'm building my own at home with 2 nodes. This is a padawan's humble
info, so please, don't kill me if I get something wrong, I mean only well.
1) You need to figure out what application are you going to run on the
cluster, in parallel. I have managed to follow only general guidelines
so far, since I'm running OpenFOAM CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics)
simulations that burden the memory and the communications between the
nodes. This will tell you about the hardware: should you use
multiprocessor motherboards or like me, quad core single processor
ones. Actually, this is kind of a gradual process of examining your
application on a cluster, and it's kind of a closed circle: you need
to know which hardware suits your applications, and to know that, you
need to have a cluster to examine your app on. From my padawan point
of view (I may be totally wrong), people usually test their
application on a remote machine (if that't possible, from some company
that provides the hardware), or they buy just a few motherboards that
fit the price/performance conditions and are IN GENERAL, OK for a
targeted application. After they assemble the tiny cluster, they scale
it, praying as they do it, that the behaviour of the program won't
completely change on the bigger machine.
This is how I've dealt with this problem:
- I need a fast processor and loads of RAM: I've bought P5Q-VM
motherboard because it's not so expensive and you get 4 slots for RAM
(up to 16GB of RAM) per node, and I've put Intel Quad core processors
on the computing nodes. I could be totally wrong, but I don't think
so: anyway, the application will tell me, and then I can sell the
electronics and buy something different (I hope to God, this won't
happen).
- I bought a GigEth switch (High Speed Interconnect I can't afford as
a graduate student because one HSI NIC kosts like 800 dollars)
- I bought myself some hard disks
- a monitor
- another GigEth nic for the frontend (master) node to be able to
access Internet
- some PSUs
- ... etc
If you want to build a small home beowulf, check out Limulus project:
http://limulus.basement-supercomputing.com/
When I figure out the casing for my cluster, it will actully become
kind of a Limulus cluster, i hope.
3) Don't worry about the "old" literature, I have read this:
- prof. Robert G. Brown's book
- how to build a beowulf cluster
- Building Cluster Linux Systems
- .... huge amount of googling...
The protocols are the same, and not much has changed from 2004.
for a small home beowulf, I have learned much by reading these
books/articles. Also, go to www.clustermonkey.net, and read until you
go blind.
I don't know much, but what I know I'll tell you (don't kill me if I'm
wrong, just correct me so that I can learn also :) ), feel free to ask
me on my email (or post here, which is more efficient because here
you'll get your answer from a well respected bunch of
HPC/Linux/Admin/Programming/... masters).
Best regards and godspeed,
Tomislav
----- Original Message -----
From: Tony Miranda
Sent: 10/21/09 08:27 pm
To: beowulf@beowulf.org
Subject: [Beowulf] Build a Beowulf Cluster
Hi everyone,
anyone could help me explaning how to build a beowulf cluster?
An web site, a list of parameters anything updated. Cause i only found
in the internet posts that are really old.
Thanks a lot.
Tony Miranda.
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