[Beowulf] Linux cluster for my college

[Tim Cutts]

On 8 Apr 2007, at 7:39 am, Sandip Dev wrote:

>   We are planning to set up a linux cluster on trail basis in our
> college.Since its merely a trail,we have been alloted PIII PCs with  
> 128 MB
> Ram and 40 GB HD on a 100 MBps LAN.All i want to know is,will this  
> hardware
> support a cluster?

Yes, although it without gigabit it will be a bit poor for MPI  
codes.  Fine for embarrassingly parallel stuff though, or just  
testing the ideas out.

> Moreover which distro/software to begin with?

Whatever distro you are more comfortable with.  I've used Red Hat in  
the past - these days I use Debian.  There are also plenty of more  
cluster oriented flavours, like Rocks.  But at the end of the day it  
doesn't really matter.  If your school supports a particular Linux  
distro, go with what local expertise you have.

Given its good support for non-European languages, you might want to  
try Ubuntu.

Tim