High Performance Linux Clusters with OSCAR, Rocks, OpenMosix, and MPI: A Comprehensive Getting-Started Guide

by Joseph D Sloan, Andy Oram (Editor)

Overview

To the outside world, a "supercomputer" appears to be a single system. In fact, it's a cluster of computers that share a local area network and have the ability to work together on a single problem as a team. Many businesses used to consider supercomputing beyond the reach of their budgets, but new Linux applications have made high-performance clusters more affordable than ever. These days, the promise of low-cost supercomputing is one of the main reasons many businesses choose Linux over other operating systems. This new guide covers everything a newcomer to clustering will need to plan, build, and deploy a high-performance Linux cluster. The book focuses on clustering for high-performance computation, although much of its information also applies to clustering for high-availability (failover and disaster recovery). The book discusses the key tools you'll need to get started, including good practices to use while exploring the tools and growing a system. You'll learn about planning, hardware choices, bulk installation of Linux on multiple systems, and other basic considerations. Then, you'll learn about software options that can save you hours--or even weeks--of deployment time. Since a wide variety of options exist in each area of clustering software, the author discusses the pros and cons of the major free software projects and chooses those that are most likely to be helpful to new cluster administrators and programmers. A few of the projects introduced in the book include:

MPI, the most popular programming library for clusters. This book offers simple but realistic introductory examples along with some pointers for advanced use.

OSCAR and Rocks, two comprehensive installation and administrative systems

openMosix (a convenient tool for distributing jobs), Linux kernel extensions that migrate processes transparently for load balancing

PVFS, one of the parallel filesystems that make clustering I/O easier

C3, a set of commands for administering multiple systems

Ganglia, OpenPBS, and cloning tools (Kickstart, SIS and G4U) are also covered. The book looks at cluster installation packages (OSCAR & Rocks) and then considers the core packages individually for greater depth or for folks wishing to do a custom installation. Guidelines for debugging, profiling, performance tuning, and managing jobs from multiple users round out this immensely useful book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596005702
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/23/2004
Series:	Nutshell Handbooks
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.19(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Joseph D. Sloan has been working with computers since the mid-1970s.He began using Unix as a graduate student in 1981, first as anapplications programmer and later as a system programmer and systemadministrator. Since 1988 he has taught computer science, first atLander University and more recently at Wofford College where he can befound using the software described in this book.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Part I: An Introduction to Clusters
  • Chapter 1: Cluster Architecture
  • Chapter 2: Cluster Planning
  • Chapter 3: Cluster Hardware
  • Chapter 4: Linux for Clusters
• Part II: Getting Started Quickly
  • Chapter 5: openMosix
  • Chapter 6: OSCAR
  • Chapter 7: Rocks
• Part III: Building Custom Clusters
  • Chapter 8: Cloning Systems
  • Chapter 9: Programming Software
  • Chapter 10: Management Software
  • Chapter 11: Scheduling Software
  • Chapter 12: Parallel Filesystems
• Part IV: Cluster Programming
  • Chapter 13: Getting Started with MPI
  • Chapter 14: Additional MPI Features
  • Chapter 15: Designing Parallel Programs
  • Chapter 16: Debugging Parallel Programs
  • Chapter 17: Profiling Parallel Programs
• Part V: Appendix
  • Appendix A: References
• Colophon