New cluster builder

[Dominic Baines]

Philip J. Matheson wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am about to begin building a beowulf cluster on RedHat 5.1 or 5.0
> machines (I have the extreme linux disk but I would like to use 5.1 is
> there a problem with this?)  Anyways, the machines:
>
> K62-300 128 mb RAM
> K6-233 96 mb RAM
> K6-200 32 mb RAM
> P166MMX 24 mb RAM
>
> Does it matter which one of these is the server node?

If it were me I'd probably make the slowest the server node, and run
theprograms on the other nodes. MPI would let you do this easily.

> I have an 8 port 10mb switch and I would like to put two NICs in each
> machine and connect each NIC to the switch.  Or, I could connect each
> computer via crosser to it's neighbor and also to the switch(or
> something like that). I have 3c905's so the crossover link could
> potentially be 100mb..

First question is what does your code look like ? Is it node HDD i/o
intensive orinternode network intensive. My own is generally the former so
making everything 100mb
doesn't increase performance any. I'd take a look at that first before you
worry
about the network performance.

If you do need the network performance and if these are stand alone then
why not consider putting
three NIC's in each and connect each to each other.

I'd up the memory in the smaller nodes to 64mb minimum as well.

> Thanks ,
>
> Philip J. Matheson
> Software Engineer / System Administrator
> National Institute for Advanced Transportation Technology
> philm@uidaho.edu

Dominic Baines
IT Manager
The University Centre
Cambridge University