CCL:Largest Linux Cluster? (fwd)
Art Edwards
edwards at icantbelieveimdoingthis.com
Thu Jan 24 13:44:59 PST 2002
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 10:17:28AM -0800, 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.
>
> 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
That is part of the home-grown software. There are parallel IO ports that require
special calls. I'm a user, not a developer so that is the extent of my expertise.
Art Edwards
>
> have fun linuxing
> alvin
> http://www.Linux-1U.net .. 8x 200GB IDE disks -->> 1.6TeraByte 1U Raid5 ..
>
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