[Beowulf] Begginers question # 1

[Jon Forrest]

On 10/4/2010 11:05 PM, John Hearns wrote:

> The 8 motherboard system will help you learn about cluster install
> techniques - how to install the smae image on many systems, or how to
> run systems with no disks, and also will teach a lot about networking
> - as you fundamentally have to have a network to get it running, and
> will have to o network troubleshooting.

For people who want to learn about cluster install
techniques and other non-production cluster-related
issues, you might want to look at the Rocks cluster
email list. I posted a description of how to
create a whole Rocks cluster on one physical
machine using VirtualBox. I call this Rocks-in-the-Box.
You'd never want to use this method for production
work but doing things this way makes it very easy
to create test clusters. You could also use these
test clusters to dabble in parallel programming.

Cordially,
-- 
Jon Forrest
Research Computing Support
College of Chemistry
173 Tan Hall
University of California Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
94720-1460
510-643-1032
jlforrest at berkeley.edu