[Beowulf] Selection of Beowulf cluster type

[Per Lindstrom]

Lombard, David N wrote:

>From: Per Lindstrom; Sunday, January 18, 2004 9:59 PM
>  
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I am going to set up my first beowulf cluster and I have no experience
>>of this.
>>
>>The cluster will be built of two dual CPU workstations.
>>
>>Box 1
>>MSI Pro266TD Master-LR2 (MS-9105)  (I can not recommended MSI)
>>2 x CPU Intel Tualatin 1,13 GHz with 512 L2 cashe
>>4 x 512 MB DDR SDRAM PC2100
>>
>>Box 2.
>>Intel model SE7505VB2 ATX PCI, FSB 533MHz
>>2 x CPU Intel 2,8 GHz Xeon with 512kB L2 cache 533FSB
>>2 x 1 GB DDR SDRAM PC2100 Reg ECC
>>
>>The cluster is intended for numerical simulations (FEA) with ABAQUS
>>    
>>
>
>The most important factor is how ABAQUS runs your jobs on the two
>systems individually and on the cluster as a whole.
>
>If ABAQUS doesn't do any sort of load balancing, e.g., it simply cuts
>the problem in half (or quarters), you will likely see the effect that
>the problem solution time is controlled (limited) by the speed of the
>slower system.
>
>You also haven't discussed the available disk (storage).  I do not know
>what the disk requirements of ABAQUS are.  If it has significant disk
>requirements, e.g., disk bandwidth, the disks will also affect the
>solution time.  I don't expect disk latency to be an issue with any FEA
>app, and presume you have sufficiently large disks.
>
>Finally, the network may have some impact when running a job across the
>nodes.
>
>Bottom line.  Once you get ABAQUS running, you will likely benefit from
>analyzing how well it runs in serial, SMP, and DMP modes on your
>cluster.  For example, you may find the "best" use is to run the cluster
>in throughput (running one job per node, possibly under a queuing
>system), rather than parallel performance mode (running one job across
>both nodes).  I put best in quotes because that quality depends on your
>needs.
>
>  
>
Thanks for your advices David,

All the best
Per Lindstro"m


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