CCL:Largest Linux Cluster? (fwd)

[Joel Jaeggli]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2002 alvin at Maggie.Linux-Consulting.com wrote:

> 
> hi art
> 
> On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Art Edwards wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 05:55:24PM +0100, Eugene Leitl wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> > > Can anyone tell me what is currently the largest linux-based workstation
> > > cluster that has been successfully deployed and is being used for
> > > computational chemistry studies?  (largest = number of nodes regardless of
> > > the speed of each node).
> > > 
> > Sandia National Laboratories has C-Plant that runs Linux in addition to several
> > layers of home-grown OS on several thousand nodes. The basic node is a DEC 
> > ev6 with myranet (sp). They use no local disk, opting for a huge disk farm.

cplant info is here:

http://www.cs.sandia.gov/cplant/

the high-level summary would something like:

myranet connected nodes in cabinets... cabinets internected with myranete. 
disk storage nodes with raid5 arrays with their own myranet switch and 
then cabinet level interconnects.

and unrelated observation whould be that:

dual hosted scsi systems have largely if note entirely been suplanted by 
fibre-channel.
 
> do you happen to know how they manage the huge disk farm???
> 	- resumably raid5 systems...
> 	- are each raid5 sub-system dual-hosted so that the other cpu
> 	can getto the data if one of the cpu cant get to it
> 	- does all nodes access the "disk farm" thru the gigabit ethernet
> 	or dual-hosted scsi cables ??
> 	- how does one optimize a disk farm ?? (hdparm seems too clumbsy)
> 
> -- in the old days.... 1980's ... there used to be dual-hosted
> disk controllers where PC-HOST#1 and PC-HOST#2 can both access the same
> physical CDC/DEC/Fujitsu drives
> 	- wish i could find these dual host scsi controllers for todaysPCs
> 
> have fun linuxing
> alvin
> http://www.Linux-1U.net .. 8x 200GB IDE disks -->> 1.6TeraByte 1U Raid5 ..
> 
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Joel Jaeggli	      Academic User Services   joelja at darkwing.uoregon.edu    
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