CCL:Largest Linux Cluster? (fwd)

[Art Edwards]

On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 10:17:28AM -0800, alvin at Maggie.Linux-Consulting.com wrote:
> 
> hi art
> 
> On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Art Edwards wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 05:55:24PM +0100, Eugene Leitl wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> > > Can anyone tell me what is currently the largest linux-based workstation
> > > cluster that has been successfully deployed and is being used for
> > > computational chemistry studies?  (largest = number of nodes regardless of
> > > the speed of each node).
> > > 
> > Sandia National Laboratories has C-Plant that runs Linux in addition to several
> > layers of home-grown OS on several thousand nodes. The basic node is a DEC 
> > ev6 with myranet (sp). They use no local disk, opting for a huge disk farm.
> 
> do you happen to know how they manage the huge disk farm???
> 	- resumably raid5 systems...
> 	- are each raid5 sub-system dual-hosted so that the other cpu
> 	can getto the data if one of the cpu cant get to it
> 	- does all nodes access the "disk farm" thru the gigabit ethernet
> 	or dual-hosted scsi cables ??
> 	- how does one optimize a disk farm ?? (hdparm seems too clumbsy)
> 
> -- in the old days.... 1980's ... there used to be dual-hosted
> disk controllers where PC-HOST#1 and PC-HOST#2 can both access the same
> physical CDC/DEC/Fujitsu drives
> 	- wish i could find these dual host scsi controllers for todaysPCs
That is part of the home-grown software. There are parallel IO ports that require 
special calls. I'm a user, not a developer so that is the extent of my expertise.

Art Edwards
> 
> have fun linuxing
> alvin
> http://www.Linux-1U.net .. 8x 200GB IDE disks -->> 1.6TeraByte 1U Raid5 ..
>