Scyld: Myrinet config?

[Jarrod A. Smith]

Please critique my system design before I waste money. :)  I know I can
make this work if I put it together with a full install of e.g. RH on
each node, but I'm very interested in the Scyld software, too...

I want 1 management node with three 10/100 NICs, and 16 slave (compute)
nodes, each with two NICs and a Myrinet card.

Two NICs from each of the 17 nodes will ideally be channel bonded and
handle all the TCP/IP traffic.  The third NIC in the mgmt node will
connect the cluster to the outside world.  The Myrinet on the slaves
will be dedicated to MPI.

Ideally, the mgmt node will not be a compute node, and will not have a
Myrinet card in it.  It will not run computations.  Is it the Scyld
beowulf software's "philosophy" to make use of the management node as a
compute node, or can you set it up to be a dedicated
login/gateway/compiler/management server?

Does this all sound reasonable or have I missed an important point in
the design?

Thanks.

-- 
Jarrod A. Smith
Research Asst. Professor, Biochemistry
Asst. Director, Center for Structural Biology
Computation and Molecular Graphics
Vanderbilt University

jsmith at structbio.vanderbilt.edu