I have successfully built a cluster of computers using computers
in my office.
Below is
a picture of the cluster.
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The cluster consists of 5 computers:
1 dual intel xeon 2.8 GHz processor computer,
2 intel pentium 3.2 GHz processor computer,
1 intel xeon 2.0 GHz processor computer, and
1 intel pentium IV 1.8 GHz processor computer.
All computers connected to a D-link gigabit ethernet switch and each computer has a gigabit ethernet card.
After testing the performance of each computer, only three computers that are in comparable speed.
These are four steps for building a cluster:
1) install linux on all nodes. Here I used Scientific Linux (SL) 4.2 distribution since it is very solid and stable distribution and it has also a nice graphical desktop.
2) install and configure OpenSSH such that connection without password.
3) install MPICH and configure it to use ssh instead of rsh.
4) configure ntpd and synchronize and update the time in all nodes.
5) install and configure nfs server and client.
In the future I will try to use OSCAR where building a cluster can be done automatically. I have done some tests using OSCAR in my virtual cluster (built using virtual computers using VMware and coLinux )
Links
OpenSSH
MPICH
OSCAR
VMware
coLinux
1 dual intel xeon 2.8 GHz processor computer,
2 intel pentium 3.2 GHz processor computer,
1 intel xeon 2.0 GHz processor computer, and
1 intel pentium IV 1.8 GHz processor computer.
All computers connected to a D-link gigabit ethernet switch and each computer has a gigabit ethernet card.
After testing the performance of each computer, only three computers that are in comparable speed.
These are four steps for building a cluster:
1) install linux on all nodes. Here I used Scientific Linux (SL) 4.2 distribution since it is very solid and stable distribution and it has also a nice graphical desktop.
2) install and configure OpenSSH such that connection without password.
3) install MPICH and configure it to use ssh instead of rsh.
4) configure ntpd and synchronize and update the time in all nodes.
5) install and configure nfs server and client.
In the future I will try to use OSCAR where building a cluster can be done automatically. I have done some tests using OSCAR in my virtual cluster (built using virtual computers using VMware and coLinux )
Links
OpenSSH
MPICH
OSCAR
VMware
coLinux