Any interest in a cluster tutorial?

[Airbozo]

If this tutorial is n00b friendly, this is gonna rock so hard.

Now we know what to do with all the old crap we all got laying around.

:edit: Do all the Mobos need to be the same?

I will make it as n00b friendly as possible without getting too heavy into details that don't matter (but will cover the details in case someone is interested).

While it is recommended that all the nodes be identical, it is not necessary. For a visual cluster it is more important that the video cards and underlying hardware is similar or there will be noticeable delays and out of sync displays.

[Luke122]

I'd love to see this also, as I have a load of old PC's here, just waiting to go the recycler. If I can make a use for them, I'd happily put them to work.

[Canadian Eh?]

Plz start this cuz it would be a very cool worklog and i am bored of all the other ones. (no offense guys!)

[Airbozo]

I am putting together an outline right now so I stay on track and don't drift too far away. I intend to do a 2 parter; One for Installation and one for configuration/operation.

I will post in another thread and start with the hardware inventory and software needed. I will then delay a day or two to allow people to gather the HW and SW in case they want to follow along. I was going to use a couple of rackmount SuperMicros, but instead I will use a couple of older mobos, then for the VIZ cluster I will use the SuperMicros with similar graphics cards (my older mobo's are agp and my good video cards are pci express (nvidia Quadro 1400's).

[Drew]

Learning to come



:edit: oops, that reads bad.... learning is coming?

Nope.

The opportunity to learn is upon us.

Better.

[Drew]

So there is a performance gain then?

:edit: Perhaps I should just wait for the tutorial....

Make sure you cover the practical advantages dude.

[Airbozo]

........ you are one informative SOB bro.

-Jeremy

Well half right anyway...

[Drew]

Yeah, that'll be it.....

[Airbozo]

So there is a performance gain then?

:edit: Perhaps I should just wait for the tutorial....

Make sure you cover the practical advantages dude.

Yes there is a performance gain. It really depends on how it is setup. Just like Minty said, think of it not as 350 + 350 (it really is not a dual proc system), rather as 2 350 mhz _systems_. Each with their own memory and i/o subsystems. Tasks (programs) are taken on by each system based on metrics you setup. System (node) 1 gets 60% busy and the next task is sent to node2 (and so on). Unless specifically programmed for clusters programs will not split up on the different nodes, but different programs will run on different nodes. There are tools available to specify which node a particular program will run on (setup manually by the end user/administrator). I will not cover those tools in the first tutorial. The first one is going to be all about getting the cluster setup and running. The second one I am planning will get into some of the monitoring and tuning tools.

Keep in mind that I am learning this too. My only advantage right now is that I have setup clusters in the past and know some of the gotchas. rocksclusters.org really does make it easy to make a cluster happen. They (UCSD) have put in a great deal of time creating the install programs that make it as easy as it is. Our web server here at work is running an HA cluster (www.mce.com). The systems are not setup to do load balancing or anything, it is just setup so that if the main server crashes, then secondary one takes over without any interruption in service. We do it this way because the second system is also our "test" server. We make changes to that system and if there are no issues, the new setup is "pushed" (using rcp, but that is another lesson) to the main server at night (causing only a minor blip in service as the webserver is restarted).

I am hoping to start posting this tutorial either this weekend or monday. I will more than likely just post the outline and items needed over the weekend, then do the actual work on my systems here at work.

Hehe I never thought being part of TBCS would actually cause me to learn geeky technical stuff (scsi vs ide thread), more than I have... Or to actually teach any of you guys anything. I was just expecting to have a nice purdy computer by now (My main rig is plain, noisy and an ugly beige color with no windows). Hehe go figure!

[Drew]

Airbozo - the teacher.