Scyld on non-dedicated network

[Sean Dilda]

On Tue, 30 Oct 2001, Jon Tegner wrote:

> At our department people are generally using windows, but quite a few of
> them has really powerful computers connected to the local network, with
> addresses supplied by a dhcp-server (running NT).
> 
> In an attempt to utilize this computing power (when the users are not
> present, e.g., nights, week-ends etc.) would it be possible to use them
> as diskless clients using Scyld, or would there be conflicts with the
> present dhcp-server that prevents this from being done?

Scyld Beowulf uses RARP instead of DHCP to give addresses to the slave
nodes.  So, if you put a Scyld Master on your network, then bootup a
random machine off a slave-node boot floppy, it should get its IP from
the Scyld Master using RARP and will never even tell the dhcp servers
about their existance.

Some things you might want to watch out for:
Make sure the NT dhcp servers aren't also serving rarp
Make sure your network will let rarp requests through
Make sure your network is setup in such away that you can have a
different subnet for the beowulf cluster and it will still get routed
internally, but not to the outside world.
Make sure your internal network can actually handle the load :)

Other than that, good luck.  There's nothing I know of that will make
the setup you want impossible, but there might be a few minor annoyances
along the way.
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