NFS

[Georgia Southern Beowulf Cluster Project]

Hello,

Two questions, both below after relevent text.

>From: "Robert G. Brown" <rgb at phy.duke.edu>
>Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 08:51:36 -0400 (EDT)
>
>
>This isn't the only way to arrange things.  Without going into lots of
>boring details, if you put local disks on all the nodes, a toolset like
>kickstart/dhpcd (along with e.g. "update" from yup or "up2date" from RH)

I'm familiar with RH up2date, which they will now be charging a subscription 
rate to use.  However, what/who/where is "yup" and "update" as I would be 
interested in doing a massive update of a 64 (out of a soon 128) node group 
of clusters.

>Finally, there is the Scyld solution, which does away with NFS
>altogether and ALSO simplifies node installation to the limit.
>

What does Scyld use to get away from NFS.  I understand that Scyld uses CDs 
to boot/install their suite of software, but how do they manage something 
like a cluster-wide /home directory?  I'm really looking for a way to get 
rid of NFS and the only thing I've seen comparable at the moment is NBD 
(Network Block Device).  Does anyone know of the development status of NBD 
and related projects as I'm getting conflicting reports?

Thanks,
Wes Wells
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