Fluent

[Andreas Boklund]

Hi Neil!

I used Redhat 7.0(Uni standard to use RedHat) but upgraded the kernel to 
2.4.test9 atonce. There were 2 major reasons for the kernel upgrade,
better SMP support and iptables. Apart from that i used the MPI that was
shipped with Fluent, (just choose Network mpi(MPICH) in that box). The
reason i did that is that im not going to maintain the system and i want
it to be simple. 

I nfs mounted the /program/ dir that fluent is installed on all nodes,
(they start 2 instances each) and placed a hosts file in the appropriate
fluent directory. 

For controlling the processes, and stopping the users from running more
then one process at the same time, which hogs memory and makes the nodes
swap i use OpenPBS and a set of custon made scripts. The scripts take the
correct variables and so forth.

I hope this is what you wanted. 
If you want more detailed information please ask again and.
 

//Andreas




> Andreas,
> 
> We are putting together linux cluster of 6 dual 800Mhz, 512MB PCs to run
> Fluent.  Which version of linux do you use and what other code did you have to
> install to run Fluent..  Did you have to install MPI?
> 
> thanks
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Neil McFadyen, P.Eng.
> System Administrator
> Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
> Carleton University
> Ottawa, Ontario
> K1S 5B6
> tel: 613-520-2600 ext 5636
> fax: 613-520-5715
> 
> 

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> Andreas Boklund wrote:
> 
> > I replied to Daniel but i might as well translate my reply to him to
> > english and add a few things and send it to the list.
> >
> > I have build 2 clusters with the purpose of running fluent on them.
> >
> > The first one was
> >
> >  FoxHole
> >  20 * Pentium III 500   128SDRAM
> >  1 * Cisco Catalyst 1900
> >
> >  The second one is the one that im "fine tuning" right now.
> >
> >  ?????
> >  1 * dual Pentium III 866 256RDRAM
> >  9 * dual Pentium III 800 256RDRAM
> >  1 * Cisco Catalyst 2900
> >
> > Our calculations has a LOT of chemistry in them so i dont think its fair
> > to draw any standard conclusions from them.
> > But maybe a few pointers:
> >
> > They dont require much bandwith.
> > Although each iteration i do with my new cluster sends approx 150-200MB of
> > information /iteration. One iteration takes just over a minute to
> > complete. This might sound like a lot but the switch is not an issue.
> >
> > On very few computers it has pretty good scalability but somewhere around
> > 10-12 processors the gain of adding another one is very small. (we need
> > the time so we added a few more anyway).
> >
> > This chart http://www.exjobb.udd.htu.se/2000/sv3/25/Image3.gif (is in
> > swedish) but it showes the time it takes for FOXHOLE with different number
> > of nodes to complete our problem, and it shows the time it takes for a
> > Dell with 4*550 and 1GBSDRAM.
> >
> > Fluent is pretty RAM hungry although for the nodes i "might" have been
> > able to use 128MB but im considering to go to 512 on the master.
> >
> > MVH
> > //Andreas
> >