Parallel batch jobs on beowulf?

[Eray Ozkural (exa)]

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We have a small research cluster at our CS dept., it's got 32 compute nodes. 
We run debian and the setup is a typical beowulf. (locally installed 
software, nfs, nis, mpich, lam, etc.)

An instructor asked us whether it would be possible to run a parallel job 
system. I know a regular batch system (like pbs) could be used to that end, 
but what is the recommended way of providing parallel batch jobs on a Beowulf 
system?

What he asked of course was the ability to allocate the whole cluster to a 
single job so that people can do benchmarks. Now, that is only useful while 
you're doing benchmarks and not necessary otherwise since development is 
usually done in an interactive manner and in case of severe resource 
conflicts developers can agree rather easily...  

Therefore, what do you think is the best practice in such research clusters?

Regards,

- -- 
Eray Ozkural (exa) <erayo at cs.bilkent.edu.tr>
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo
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