Re: Beowulf generally

[Tim Cutts <timc@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 12:15:35PM -0700, Grendel wrote:
> I have read some of this list and I'm trying to decide whether
> there is real utility in using the scyld packages. I have noticed that
> there is a utility called diskless. I have 20GB disks on each of the 
> nodes. Is the diskless method appropriate?

I think it's a nice idea (although I can't use it myself for other
reasons).  A local disk may still be a good idea, depending on what you
are going to be using the cluster for.   If you're going to be running
compute-intensive MPI jobs and the like, then you probably don't need
them.  However, I have nodes performing bioinformatics database
searches.  If all of these nodes were searching a central copy of the
database over NFS all the time, the network would be clogged solid, and
all the nodes would be permanently waiting on the network.

So, most of the programs which search these databases are wrapped with a
shell script which caches the required databases on the local disk.

Tim.