[TriLUG] Penguin Computing Servers & Clustering

Joe Meador linux at alien.biochem.wfubmc.edu
Fri Jul 18 15:11:39 EDT 2003


Hi Jay,

Originally we were looking into Scyld, but I believe the Scyld
license costs around $375 / processsor.  Scyld has a reputation of
being a somewhat easier to manage cluster solution.  When I was first
looking into clusters Scyld was cheaper than it is now, and even had an
educational discount.  Their prices went up a few months ago and thus
Scyld was no longer an option.  I would rather pay money for hardware
than software, but perhaps the expensive licensing will change now that
Penguin has bought them out (but I doubt it).  So then I started looking
at Rocks and Oscar, and both are free.  Oscar seems to be a very popular
choice now, but from my limited experience looks to be somewhat more
difficult to manage than Rocks.  From what I can tell, Rocks is the
easiest to setup, but it's one of  the young cluster OS'es.  Oscar
and Rocks are both based on RedHat 7.3 and contact much of the same job
schedulers, etc.  I'm
waiting on my head node to arrive from Penguin, but hopefully it'll be
arriving soon so that I can set it up and get it going.  I'm very new
to this but I hope I'll be able to get everything running well with
Rocks.  You can read
about them at http://www.scyld.com , http://oscar.sourceforge.net , and
http://www.rocksclusters.org - and of course Penguin Computing's website
is http://www.penguincomputing.com.

The entire cluster is going to be in one 42U rack.  Each compute node is
only 1U, so we could add more into our current setup if needed.  I'm using
gig-E interconnects between nodes.

FWIW, I contacted Dell, IBM, and Penguin for quotes.  Penguin was
by far the most affordable.  They don't have all the extras, like a
separate switch for CMOS access to all nodes, etc, but I'm okay with that.
Penguin is a small company that only sells computers with Linux.  Their
response has been great - I could tell they really wanted my business
even though the cluster I ordered from them is modest in size at best.

Joe

 On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Jay Barrett wrote:

> Hi Joe,
>
> Do you mind me asking what software you are using to manage your cluster and
> if it is all going to be in one location.  I have started doing some
> research into grids and clusters and would be interested in hearing how you
> make out.
>
> At one time there was a small amount of interest in clusters at Trilug
> didn't know if anyone still has any interest or not.
>
> Regards,
> Jay
>
> TGIF
>
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