[Beowulf] building my first cluster

[Angel de Vicente]

Hi Mark,

> Other than just saying hello here, I do have a question.  For this
> modest sized cluster, how important is it to have a cluster manager
> like OSCAR?  Will it be just as time consuming to just learn a flavor
> of MPI as it would be to learn to use OSCAR (for example)?  I will
> primarily be using CPMD for my calculations, but may want to try out
> abinit and DFT++.

If this is a personal cluster, and you are going to be the only user,
installing cluster management software would probably be not
worthwhile. If you make sure you install the same software in all the
nodes, connect them with a switch, perhaps install NFS for your home
directory and install a version of MPICH, you probably have all you
need for many happy hours of parallel computation.

Cheers,
Angel de Vicente