[Beowulf] One network, or two?

[Matt Lawrence]

On Tue, 23 Sep 2008, Alan Ward wrote:

> I have been reading the ongoing discussion on network usage with some 
> interest, mainly because in all (admittedly very small, 4 to 8 node) 
> clusters we have set up so far, we have always gone with doubling the 
> network. Nowadays we mostly run a 100 MBit/s "el cheapo" FastEthernet 
> for control, NFS and monitoring, while the faster Gigabit is exclusively 
> for MPI. Applications are CFD, with various levels of granularity.

We are running a 1Gb network that has 10Gb connections to the head node 
and fileservers as well.  We also have a 100Mb network that is seperate 
for management and BMC traffic.  Since our systems have two ethernet ports 
on the motherboard, the only cost was the switches and cables.  For the 
price, I think it is very worthwhile.

-- Matt
It's not what I know that counts.
It's what I can remember in time to use.