Difference between revisions of "Cluster Design"

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Clusters are all about design. Indeed, clusters are about designing machines
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around problems. When designing a cluster the following questions need to be
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may be helpful
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Consider your budget?
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* Do you need help with software and support? If so, reserve soem funds for this part of the project.
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* Do you plan on assembling the cluster yourself? If yes, at what level? Starting from motherboards, cases, memory, processros, etc. can be very tiem consumeing. Buy quality parts
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How many processors?
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* This depends on your application. How well does you applicaiton scale. Have you tested it on a real cluster? If it is a common application, have other run it on a cluster?
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*
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What Type of Interconnect?
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* Again, this depends on your applicaiton. If you can use Gigabit Ethernet, then  you can probabaly by more nodes. If you need a faster interconnect, then you may have to sacrifie nodes for interconnects to stay in your budget.
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Books
 
Books
  
 
* [http://www.phy.duke.edu/resources/computing/brahma/Resources/beowulf_book.php  Engineering a Beowulf-Style Compute Cluster by Robert G. Brown ] - A freely available book on building/designing Beowulf style clusters.
 
* [http://www.phy.duke.edu/resources/computing/brahma/Resources/beowulf_book.php  Engineering a Beowulf-Style Compute Cluster by Robert G. Brown ] - A freely available book on building/designing Beowulf style clusters.

Revision as of 14:42, 24 January 2006

Clusters are all about design. Indeed, clusters are about designing machines around problems. When designing a cluster the following questions need to be may be helpful

Consider your budget?

  • Do you need help with software and support? If so, reserve soem funds for this part of the project.
  • Do you plan on assembling the cluster yourself? If yes, at what level? Starting from motherboards, cases, memory, processros, etc. can be very tiem consumeing. Buy quality parts

How many processors?

  • This depends on your application. How well does you applicaiton scale. Have you tested it on a real cluster? If it is a common application, have other run it on a cluster?

What Type of Interconnect?

  • Again, this depends on your applicaiton. If you can use Gigabit Ethernet, then you can probabaly by more nodes. If you need a faster interconnect, then you may have to sacrifie nodes for interconnects to stay in your budget.


Books