[Beowulf] Compute Node OS on Local Disk vs. Ram Disk

[Gerry Creager]

John Hearns wrote:
> 
> 
> 2008/10/1 Donald Becker <becker at scyld.com <mailto:becker at scyld.com>>
> 
> 
>      
>       It's foreseeable that holding an 8GB install
>     image in memory will be trivial, but that will be a few years in the
>     future, not today.  And we will need better VM and PTE management to
>     make
>     it efficient.
> 
>      
> 
> Hmmmm.... can I forsee Puppy Linux HPC Edition ????
> http://www.puppylinux.org/
>  
>  
> Being half serious here, is it worth trying to get one of these 
> slimmed-down distros to the state where it will run an HPC job?
> Oh, and in addition to a barebones install for our contemplative 
> cluster, they have a onebones install which cuts out the GUI (cue more 
> dog puns).
>  
> http://www.puppylinux.com/pfs/ looks interesting...

Starts to sound like Rocks.  Which I'll finish installing on a small 
cluster tomorrow and will form more opinions then.  First impressions 
(really second: I've had another small cluster up with it for 3 years) 
is that it's seamless for the scientists once they figure out where 
their apps are.  I've been pretty happy with it: It's been mostly "set 
and forget".

Bogdan, we're in a similar position, save I also do some of the science. 
  Our latest cluster serves users in Atmospheric Science, Chemistry, 
Math, Statistics, Agriculture & Life Sciences, Computer Science, 
Oceanography and Nuclear (or was that "nuculeer"?) engineering... Most 
are somewhat astute to computation but not one rises to the point of 
"computational scientist" in being able to combine extensive computer 
science/engineering knowledge with their much more important discipline 
knowledge.  Hiding the details from them, but meeting their needs at the 
same time is a constant challenge.
-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.862.3983
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