[Beowulf] Benchmarking a Cluster

[Patrick McDonnell]

Hi,

My high school has been working on a small beowulf cluster, consisting of 
several old computers (and a couple newer ones).  (More specs available on 
the website in my sig).  While the cluster is by no means powerful enough to 
impress people with benchmarks, it would be nice to be "buzzword-compliant," 
and at least have some nice graphs showing "benchmarks."

I am not at all familiar with benchmarking, on clusters or otherwise, so I'd 
appreciate any advice I can get.  Basically, what benchmarking utilities are 
most appropriate, what's the best data to present, the best way to present 
that data, etc.

Currently, I have MPICH and PVM setup and functioning across the cluster.  I 
also have POVRAY-3.50c setup with the PVMPOV patch.  So far, my best attempt 
at a benchmark has been to compare the amount of time it takes POV-Ray to 
finish rendering its benchmark scene on the head-node vs. head-node + 4 
nodes.  (approx. 7 minutes, btw).  Anyway, I appreciate any help I can get.  
Thanks.

-- 

Patrick McDonnell

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MUNCC 2 System Administrator
http://muncc.marmionacademy.org/
pmcdonnell at muncc.marmionacademy.org
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