Infinite Recursion

Has anyone here created a Beowulf Cluster? I'm looking to build one out of a few spare parts I have laying around. When I get a good design and a feel for the intricate details... I am looking to buy more updated equipment (faster processors, ram, etc) to create a higher performance cluster. I just didn't want to smoke new equipment right off the bat while I get things figured out, hence the design of the guinea pig cluster.

If you have built such a system before... I'd be interested in the unix/linux distribution that you used and any articles / utilities that you may have found beneficial in the development process.

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"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

MiKuS

I've also been interested in building a Beowulf Cluster,

So far, I'm thinking of using DragonFly BSD as my OS and using a setup similar to this

http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/design/

The wikipedia article on beowulf clusters has a fair bit of information and links to resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_(computing)

milot

I'm also interested on building a beowulf cluster just for fun, but for now I still live in my dorm so I am planning after my graduation to build one (depends on time and money), but for now I've found some resources for you so they may be helpful :

http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/beowulf/.../tutorial.html
http://www.dl.ac.uk/TCSC/DisCo/TechPapers/Beowulf/

Dameon

Considered ClusterKnopix? It's based on the mosix patch, which allows processes to migrate among machines. Could be interesting.

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Infinite Recursion

Mikus: I haven't heard of the DragonFly BSD, I'll take a look at that soon.
I came across that article about the Microwulf cluster setup at Calvin University during my initial research. I wouldn't mind mirroring their setup as well.

Milot: Thanks for the links, I've added them to my collection to review as well.

Dameon: I took a look at ClusterKnoppix after someone recommended ParallelKnoppix, if my current setup fails... I'm going to switch to using one of the *Knoppix distros.


I did not have sufficient older parts afterall... I didn't want to waste time with 200-400Mhz processors and 64mb machines... so I decided to purchase some older systems off the Net in the 866Mhz to 1.2Ghz range. Currently, I'm utilizing OSCAR (open source cluster application resources) to install the cluster. (http://oscar.openclustergroup.org/). I'm still in the beginning phases. However, what I do not like is the fact I had to blow away my updated distro on the server node and install an older version of Fedora Core 4 because of the lack of compatibility. For this reason alone, I'm thinking about scrubbing it and using the a *Knoppix approach. I am going to allocate this weekend to try and to get the cluster with at least 4 nodes off the ground.

__________________
http://jasonpowers.net

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

Benoit

Do you have any plans in mind for what the cluster will be used for? I'd like to see how this turns out.

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Johnny was a chemist's son but Johnny is no more, for what Johnny thought was H2O was H2SO4

MiKuS

use it to generate big rainbow tables, i want to read dameons sig.