<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Aug 25, 2005, at 3:39 AM, <A href="mailto:beowulf-request@beowulf.org">beowulf-request@beowulf.org</A> wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">... the resources that I have are these:</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">1 Intel Pentium 4 3 Ghz Procs <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>10</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">2 Intel Mother boards<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>10</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">3 200 GB SATA Hard disks <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>10</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">4 120 GB IDE Hard disks <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>10</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">5 Network cards<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>10 + 1 (1 extra for master)</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">6 Some already present switches</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">All the IDE drives will be primary (the OS will reside on this) and</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">the SATA drives will be use as secondary drives for storage)</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">My plan (and requirement) is the following:</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">1 To get the cluster up and running parallel jobs.</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">2 The way I intend to do 1 is this. Install the OS (SuSE 9.3 Pro) on</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">the master and install bare-bones ( I am not sure, but may be something</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">like kernel, NFS and/or NIS, SSH, etc) on the rest of the nodes so</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">that I am able to run parallel jobs as well as serial jobs on the</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">nodes. Will require help on this.</FONT></P> <BR></BLOCKQUOTE><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande; min-height: 16.0px"><BR></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">Your hardware looks perfectly reasonable for a small cluster.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Let's </FONT><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">hope that your NICs and switches "match" in some way -- enough ports, </FONT><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">gigabit ports and gigabit cards, whatever.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>One has to wonder a bit </FONT><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">about why the nodes have both a 120 GB IDE and 200 GB SATA drive instead </FONT><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">of e.g. 2x[120,200] GB SATA only.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>I've never mixed drives like this and </FONT><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">would expect that it works but would worry that it might do something to </FONT><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">performance (Mark Hahn usually is the answer man as far as the overall </FONT><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">IDE drive subsystem is concerned:-).</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">* Hardware suggestions:</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">Take the "master" off of any alternate network until complete debugging of the cluster is accomplished (unplug it, at the least, and remove that "alternate" NIC if possible) ... set the whole thing up as a completely stand alone cluster until it works as required.</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">I would also wonder about the switches (10/100baseT = :>] or Gigabit switches = :>) ?) If two switches, then "balance" the loads = same number of CAT5 connections on each switch = 5 & 5 plus jumper, if three switches = 3 & 3 & 4 plus jumpers.</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Lucida Grande; ">All BIOS configurations on all systems should closely match, especially I/O port configurations. All NIC (network cards) should match = brand name and model type where possible.</DIV><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">Although I do not speak from authority on this type of x86 cluster, my best guess to increase performance would be to use the SATA drivers completely for the OS and cluster work and use the IDE drives for mirroring and backup (the exact reverse of your configurations) ... keeping the IDE drives off of the cluster if possible ... or even remove the IDE drives from the systems and make a RAID array for the cluster network.</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">web-pages</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">* OS and software configurations = Trust Mr. Hearns', DGS' and Mr. Brown's suggestions.</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">From John Hearns: </P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">" ... You could do worse than to consult Robert Brown's web-pages, Google for Brahma and Duke University. Also get a copy of the OReilly book on Linux clustering, the latest one. ..."</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">From DGS:</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">" ... You should look into some of the cluster "toolkits". Free ones include OSCAR, ROCKS, Warewulf, and oneSIS. My favorite is Warewulf, though ROCKS is probably the nearest you can get to a "cluster in a box" for free. ..."</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">From Robert Brown:</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">" ... I'm assuming that the NICs are PXE-capable and that you've got a KVM setup that you can move from machine to machine somehow to set the BIOS and manage at least the initial install. ..." </P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">Ed Karns</P><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">FireWireStuff.com</P></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></BODY></HTML>