[scyld-users] Re: Scyld-users digest, Vol 1 #3 - 1 msg

[Donald Becker]

On Fri, 22 Nov 2002 scyld-users-request at beowulf.org wrote:

> From: "James D. Marco" <jdm27 at cornell.edu>
>
> The Scyld disk put the cluster up on my computers, fine.

Which version are you using?  A 28Cz install?  The new 28Dz-5
distributed at SC2002?  Or an older 27 series version?

> We had some minor trouble with one of the vendors. He installed a stand-alone
> cluster based on PVM and MPI (each of the machines was a stand alone 
> computer.) But, he refused to support it.

This is an increasingly common story: a vendor installs a Linux
distribution on each node, checks the MPI and PVM boxes, and sells it as
a cluster.  But there is no one that understands the system to explain
how it is configured or to fix problems.

> I broke the cluster down into Master and  Compute nodes based on Scyld
> and told the users I would support that. 
> 	1) I am looking for some sample programs. The users are a little
> 	skeptical that it is up and running after the vendor problem. If I can
> 	demonstrate a 200-300% performance increase, this would be good.

Most distribution CDs have linpack and mpi-mandel.
Our SC2002 demo disk from this past week has a few pre-configured demos.
Our "SCALES" (Scyld Cluster Applications...) CD was distributed at
LinuxWorld and the IEEE cluster conference.

> 2) Is the Scyld cluster multi-processor capable?  I have not seen the 
> SMP kernel in the start up of the Scyld cluster. I note that the monitor
> shows both CPU's on all nodes.

Our new Zero Install Cluster demo CDs have only a uniprocessor kernel in
order to reliably work on all systems and still fit onto a single CD.

Most other versions have both uniprocessor and SMP kernels.

-- 
Donald Becker				becker at scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Scyld Beowulf cluster system
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993