sce and scylid

[Putchong Uthayopas]

Hi,

SCE is an effort which is quite similar to Scyld in many way.

1. SCE give you fully integrated software stack consists of
- Cluster builder tools ( similar to Lui). The focus is on diskless node.
Diskfull will be support in SCE 1.5 which is due around
November this year ( of course, there is SC2001) .
- Cluster management tools with X and web interface ( like Scyld
Professional). SCE have VRML interface ( Scyld ?)
- Very extensive system monitoring, health monitoring scaled to hundreds of
nodes.
- Cluster Middle ware (called KSIX ). Scyld rely on Bproc.
- Extensive parallel unix command. ( pcp, pps, pls ....) similar to bsh
bpush...
- Batch scheduler. SCE team develope our own batch scheduler which is much
simpler than openpbs. But
Open PBS run fine on SCE based cluster.
- Management is done on Master node for simplicity.

Some differences.

1. SCE  required no kernel modification at all. SCE rely on user level
middleware (called KSIX) to provide a single system.
We beleived that all necessary services can be done in in user level
middleware. So, new kernel change will have very little effect on SCE. So,
SCE will easily support new linux distribution and users can benefit quicker
from new improvement in Linux when new distribution has been released.
2. SCE is not the whole distribution. SCE seperate builder mechanism from
tools. So, SCE tools can be installed on existing
cluster built by , for example Lui or System Imager or on OSCAR
distribution. But using SCE builder make installation very easy and very
automatics.
3. Under SCE, all nodes in the cluster react as a normal unix node. so, you
can login to it, using file system and do what ever you do with normal
login. No special command require to interact with the node. Of course,
parallel unix command provides help simplify collective operation such as
replicating password files among multiple nodes.
4. Again, since SCE require no kernel modification, the process behavior in
SCE is normal. It means that all software being developed for Linux is
compatible. No special adjustment. For example, SCE include very standard
MPICH in it, no modification except making it in rpm format and automate the
configuration.  This quarantee that all the software you download can be
used 100% compatible.
So, PVFS, OpenPBS, NAMD and more , in principle, are supported but we did
not heavily tested them.

5. We are now using SCE middle , KSIX, internally to manage globus job. SCE
will be a good fabric to build a computational
grid of beowulf quickly.

*** Limitation. Current SCE support only X86. But part of SCE has been
tested and run fine on Alpha. We are getting help
to test SCE on alpha and we will definitely support alpha in release 1.5.
*** SCE is now fully tested on Redhat 6.2, 7.1 but it will be easy to port
to Mandrake, dabian or what ever.  We just want to spend time and effort on
adding more features for now. But code has been written to be very portable.

Some points I want to explain.

1. SCE is a long term project. We build SCE to support our users here in our
country.
Our group are working on bit and piece of SCE for the pst 5 years.
We released it for everybody since it is nice to share the work. SCE project
operates on many sources of funding and labour cost in my country is cheap
so we commit to extend and support SCE for many many years to come with a
lot of people :-)

2. We admire the work done by scyld and beleived that scyld is a good and
robust commercial product.
 We view SCE more as an alternative. Just a different style and methods to
reach the same goal. Also, we have to do it
anyway so no reason not to allow people to use it too.

The plan is to release SCE1.5 around November and SCE2.0 around Febuary or
March with much more tools and features.

Finally, we suggest that the best way is to try. SCE can be fully installed
on 4 nodes with in 20 minutes.
SCE also has an uninstall too :-)

Please visit http://prg.cpe.ku.ac.th/research/sce  for more information.

Best Wishes,

SCE team







----- Original Message -----
From: "ilker ARABACI" <i.arabaci at hiperaktif.com>
To: <beowulf at beowulf.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 3:32 PM
Subject: sce and scylid


> First of all , thanks to everybody regarding my request before..
>
> On my search , I saw the project "sce  (Scalable  Cluster Environment)" at
> soureceforge  (sce.sourceforge.net ) .  which publishing the iso of 1.0
> stable version,
> saying that supporting RedHat 7.1, does anyone tested  and can make a
> comparison to  Scylid ?
>
>
>
>
>
>
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