[Beowulf] Build a Beowulf Cluster

[Tony Miranda]

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.maric at 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 at 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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