Re: Just A Few Questions...

[Junichi Uekawa <dancer@netfort.gr.jp>]

> > You might also look into FAI, and diskless.  Diskless is a bit difficult 
> > to set up, you have to install and verify tftpd and dhcp3-server, and 
> > make a pretty extensive dhcpd.conf and /etc/exports.  But once it's set 
> > up, administration is easy -- on the head node, just chroot into the new 
> > "root", install packages, etc.  The docs are quite good.

> I will be preparing installation of Linux cluster and I'm thinking about
> "diskless" solution as well. My only conern is throughput - I don't want
> to get stuck with congested network. Are you (or anybody else) using
> diskless nodes and could say how they behave?

penalty of diskless nodes mostly happen at program startup times, 
and it is mostly unnoticable.

However, for programs which use diskspace as scratch working place, 
the network penalty is rather big, but they are probably better off 
using ramdisk than local disk.


That's my impression.

regards,
	junichi