Beowulf start-up?

Mattson, Timothy G timothy.g.mattson at intel.com
Fri Feb 23 12:38:40 PST 2001


Going out and finding what you need on your own can be difficult.  I suggest
you go with a "packaged" solution.

One option is OSCAR.  We  designed OSCAR to make it easier to build a
Beowulf cluster.  You can get our developers release at:

   www.openclustergroup.org

We call it a "developers release" because its still a bit more challenging
for the general user  than we'd like.

In terms of hardware, the easiest way to use OSCAR is with PXE enabled
network booting.  That should work if you have up to date hardware.  I've
found some systems with slightly older BIOS releases have problems with
network booting.  In that case, you can still build an OSCAR cluster, but it
requires the use of the etherboot package.  We include everything you need
to do this, but at this point, its not very well documented (that will
hopefully be fixed in a week or two).

Another option is to get the Scyld CD.  I haven't tried using it yet (I hope
to soon), but from what I've heard, its a high quality and straight forward
way to build a cluster.  You can learn more about them at www.scyld.com

Good luck

--Tim




-----Original Message-----
From: ILGIN SEKER [mailto:iseker at isbank.net.tr]
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 11:39 AM
To: Beowulf Mailing List
Subject: Beowulf start-up?


Hi to everybody. I'm new to this amazing list and have some questions:

What are the "essential" hardware to build a beowulf? i.e. Can I get 10
old 8085s (yes I have;), connect'em and make it?

And the same for software? All those Process ID 'globalers', file
managers, control scripts etc.are confusing for me. What I need and what
I've better have?

I want to code an example software to demonstrate beowulf performance to
my instructor; what type of operations/usage are the good ones to show
the stronger parts of beowulf?

That's it, thanks...
Cagil SEKER

"There's one thing stronger than all the armies in the world;
 and that's an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo


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