mulitcast copy or snowball copy

[Erik Arneson]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 11:26:17AM +0200, Rene Storm wrote:
> Hi Beowulfers,
>  
> Problem:
> I want to distribute large files over a cluster.
> To raise performance I decided to copy the file to the local HD of any node in the cluster.
>  
> Did someone find a multicast solution for that or maybe something with snowball principle?

I am really new to the Beowulf thing, so I am not sure if this solution is a
good one or not.  But have you taken a look at the various network
filesystems?  OpenAFS has a configurable client-side cache, and if the files
are needed only for reading this ends up being a very quick and easy way to
distribute changes throughout a number of nodes.

(However, I have noticed that network filesystems are not often mentioned in
conjunction with Beowulf clusters, and I would really love to learn why.
Performance?  Latency?  Complexity?)

-- 
;; Erik Arneson <erik at aarg.net>      SD, Ashland Lodge No. 23 ;;
;; GPG Key ID: 2048R/8B4CBC9C   CoTH, Siskiyou Chapter No. 21 ;;
;; <http://erik.arneson.org/>     <http://www.aarg.net/mason> ;;

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