Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Tue, 7 Oct 2008, John Hearns wrote: If we're talking about different interconnects to run specific jobs Most of my previous messages in this thread were related to having to run multiple distributions to cater for the needs of specific application software which would not run or would not

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

2008/10/7 Bogdan Costescu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Thanks for sharing all these details, but I would be more interested to > know about the technical solutions that you have applied. How do you deal > with the various software packages that require specific conditions to run ? > Do you have separat

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, Gerry Creager wrote: Bogdan, we're in a similar position, save I also do some of the science. I (try to) do some of the science too, so the similarity is even better :-) Hiding the details from them, but meeting their needs at the same time is a constant challenge. Th

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

John Hearns wrote: 2008/10/1 Donald Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > It's foreseeable that holding an 8GB install image in memory will be trivial, but that will be a few years in the future, not today. And we will need better VM and PTE management to

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

Bogdan Costescu wrote: On Wed, 1 Oct 2008, Eric Thibodeau wrote: the NFS root approach only does changes on the head node and changed files don't need to be propagated and are accessed on a as-needed basis, this might have significant impacts on large deployments NFS-root doesn't scale too w

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

John Hearns wrote: > Damn Small (DSL) is, Puppy is not. I believe Puppy is it's own beast. > > The FAQ on the site says its a Slackware derivative, if I'm not wrong. > What goes around comes around I guess :-) Maybe those kipper ties from > the 70s will be back too. First question on the page

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

> > Damn Small (DSL) is, Puppy is not. I believe Puppy is it's own beast. > > The FAQ on the site says its a Slackware derivative, if I'm not wrong. What goes around comes around I guess :-) Maybe those kipper ties from the 70s will be back too. Actually, and here I toss in a handgrenade, if we a

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

stephen mulcahy wrote: > John Hearns wrote: >> H can I forsee Puppy Linux HPC Edition >> http://www.puppylinux.org/ >> >> >> Being half serious here, is it worth trying to get one of these >> slimmed-down distros to the state where it will run an HPC job? >> Oh, and in addition to

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

2008/10/2 Bogdan Costescu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Wed, 1 Oct 2008, Eric Thibodeau wrote: > >> the NFS root approach only does changes on the head node and changed files >> don't need to be propagated and are accessed on a as-needed basis, this >> might have significant impacts on large deployment

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

John Hearns wrote: H can I forsee Puppy Linux HPC Edition http://www.puppylinux.org/ Being half serious here, is it worth trying to get one of these slimmed-down distros to the state where it will run an HPC job? Oh, and in addition to a barebones install for our contemplative

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

2008/10/1 Donald Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > It's foreseeable that holding an 8GB install > image in memory will be trivial, but that will be a few years in the > future, not today. And we will need better VM and PTE management to make > it efficient. > > > H can I forsee Puppy Lin

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Wed, 1 Oct 2008, Eric Thibodeau wrote: the NFS root approach only does changes on the head node and changed files don't need to be propagated and are accessed on a as-needed basis, this might have significant impacts on large deployments NFS-root doesn't scale too well, the implementation

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Wed, 1 Oct 2008, Donald Becker wrote: That's correct. Our model is that a "cluster" is a single system -- and a single install. That's the idea that I've also started with, almost 10 years ago ;-) Not using Beo*/bproc, but NFS-root which allowed a single install in the node "image" to be

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

Bogdan Costescu wrote: On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Eric Thibodeau wrote: This has given me much flexibility and a very fast path to upgrade the nodes (LIVE!) since they would only need to be rebooted if I changed the kernel. I can install/upgrade the node's environment by simply chrooting into it an

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

There seem to be significant advantages using Scyld ClusterWare, I did try it (Scyld?) many years ago (when it was free?) and I was impressed then. However, when looking at penguincomputing.com I don't find any price quotes. It seems - unless I miss something - one has to fill in a rather leng

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Eric Thibodeau wrote: This has given me much flexibility and a very fast path to upgrade the nodes (LIVE!) since they would only need to be rebooted if I changed the kernel. I can install/upgrade the node's environment by simply chrooting into it and using the node's packa

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Wed, 1 Oct 2008, Bogdan Costescu wrote: > On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Donald Becker wrote: > > Ahhh, your first flawed assumption. > > You believe that the OS needs to be statically provisioned to the nodes. > > That is incorrect. > Well, you also make the flawed assumption that the best technical >

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Donald Becker wrote: Ahhh, your first flawed assumption. You believe that the OS needs to be statically provisioned to the nodes. That is incorrect. Well, you also make the flawed assumption that the best technical solutions are always preferred. From my position I have

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

Jon I'm replying to Don's post since he outlines most of the reasons why I choose to use the NFS-mounted approach and let you choose weather or not you want a local disk(s) for scratch. Which brings up the _real_ questions: - how many nodes - are they all identical - how many users concur

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

Greg Lindahl wrote: On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 09:05:16AM -0700, Jon Forrest wrote: Probably the most dangerous is modifying shared libraries and executables. Uh, this is the safest, if you do it correctly. How do you think people can use rpm/apt/whatever to update their systems with nothing goi

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 09:05:16AM -0700, Jon Forrest wrote: > Probably the most dangerous is modifying > shared libraries and executables. Uh, this is the safest, if you do it correctly. How do you think people can use rpm/apt/whatever to update their systems with nothing going wrong? -- greg

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 09:05:16AM -0700, Jon Forrest wrote: > Bogdan Costescu wrote: > > > I use for a long time a different approach - the node "image" is copied > > via rsync at boot time; the long waiting time for installing the RPMs > > and running whatever configuration scripts happens only

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Prentice Bisbal wrote: This brings up something else I was wondering about: If you truly strip down the OS running the nodes so that its just a tiny kernel and only the essential libraries, the users would have to compile all their software (assuming they compile their own

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Sun, 28 Sep 2008, Jon Forrest wrote: > There are two philosophies on where a compute node's > OS and basic utilities should be located: > 1) On a local harddrive > 2) On a RAM disk > I'd like to start a discussion on the positives > and negatives of each approach. I'll throw out > a few. > > B

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Jon Forrest wrote: The trouble with rebooting nodes is that this takes human energy. When using a queueing system, rebooting nodes can be automated easily: - the node to be rebooted is switched to "offline" state so that the scheduler doesn't attempt to start new jobs on

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Brian Oborn wrote: It works well except that the fileserver gets hammered if there's a time when many nodes are turned on at once. I don't know what you call "many"... When I boot 100+ nodes simultaneously, the avgload on the rsync server stays under 1; the server is a "

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

I don't agree with you here as you probably have in mind a kickstart-based install for approach #1 running upon each node boot. I use for a long time a different approach - the node "image" is copied via rsync at boot time; the long waiting time for installing the RPMs and running whatever

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

Prentice Bisbal wrote: This brings up something else I was wondering about: If you truly strip down the OS running the nodes so that its just a tiny kernel and only the essential libraries, the users would have to compile all their software (assuming they compile their own code, like they do her

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

Bogdan Costescu wrote: On Sun, 28 Sep 2008, Jon Forrest wrote: There are two philosophies on where a compute node's OS and basic utilities should be located: You forget a NFS-root setup, this doesn't require memory for the RAM disk on which you later mount NFS dirs. You're right. I should

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

expands ... >> >> Cheers, >> -Alan >> >> >> >> -----Original Message- >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Jon Forrest >> Sent: Mon 9/29/2008 6:44 AM >> To: Beowulf Mailing List >> Subject: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

Bogdan Costescu wrote: > On Sun, 28 Sep 2008, Jon Forrest wrote: > This also depends on how much of the distribution you keep as part of > the node "image" and how you place the application software. It's often > the case that the application software is distributed to the nodes from > a cluster-w

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

On Sun, 28 Sep 2008, Jon Forrest wrote: There are two philosophies on where a compute node's OS and basic utilities should be located: You forget a NFS-root setup, this doesn't require memory for the RAM disk on which you later mount NFS dirs. In both cases it's important to remember to mak

Re: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

heers, -Alan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Jon Forrest Sent: Mon 9/29/2008 6:44 AM To: Beowulf Mailing List Subject: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk There are two philosophies on where a compute node's OS and basic utilities should be l

RE: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

6:44 AM To: Beowulf Mailing List Subject: [Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk There are two philosophies on where a compute node's OS and basic utilities should be located: 1) On a local harddrive 2) On a RAM disk I'd like to start a discussion on the positives a

[Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

There are two philosophies on where a compute node's OS and basic utilities should be located: 1) On a local harddrive 2) On a RAM disk I'd like to start a discussion on the positives and negatives of each approach. I'll throw out a few. Both approaches require that a compute node "distributio