<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">2008/2/9, Geoff Jacobs <<a href="mailto:gdjacobs@gmail.com">gdjacobs@gmail.com</a>>:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Berkley Starks wrote:<br>> Thank you all so much for the advice so far. This has helped me see a<br>> few more of the things that I did not realize at first.<br>><br>> For a little info on the project, I developed this project as a tool to<br>
> work on my Senior Thesis in a year or so. Doing computational nuclear<br>> physics requires such resources. It will also be used heavily for Monte<br>> Carlo Simulations and just about any other form of computational<br>
> physics. The two named are definite projects that are already on the<br>> line up for when I do get the cluster up and functional.<br>><br>> I want to be able to make the cluster easily expandable, in that I will<br>
> be starting with only a few machines (about 2-8), but will be acquiring<br>> more as time goes on. The university that I am attending surpluses out<br>> "old" machines every 4 years, and we have set up a program where we can<br>
> get a percentage of the surplus machines for out cluster.<br>><br>> So, as for size. Initially it will be a smaller cluster, but will grow<br>> as time goes on.<br>><br>> Being new to the Beowulf world, I am just mainly looking for some advice<br>
> as to what distro to use (I would never dream of setting up a cluster on<br>> windows) and if there were any little tricks that weren't mentioned in<br>> the setup how to guides.<br>><br>> Oh, and I would also like to know if there was a way to set up a task<br>
> priority where if I had only only application running it would use all<br>> the processors on the cluster, but if I had two tasks sent to the<br>> cluster then it would split the load between them and run both<br>
> simultaneously, but still using a maximum for the needed processors.<br>><br>> Thanks again so much,<br>><br>> Berkley<br><br>1) Go straight to a gigE switch. There's really no reason in pricing to<br>
not go with gigE, unless you're getting something for free.</blockquote><div><br>I agree with that.<br>Non mananged or "web managed" gigE switches are really cheap today.<br>Several motherborards come with gigE onborard, so you can get some gigE NICs already in the surplus hardware you recieve.<br>
</div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">2) Surplus hardware will definitely allow you to work through some of<br>the kinks. I'm guessing the computers will be p4s? Likely with fast<br>
ethernet. You can try your codes on the built in nics and see how things<br>scale. You might need to upgrade your network.</blockquote><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
3) As far as distro is concerned, what are people familiar with at your<br>site? Do you project any ISV requirements?<br><br>--<br>Geoffrey D. Jacobs<br><br>To have no errors<br> would be life without meaning<br> No struggle, no joy<br>
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