Re: panel at ClusterWorld
On Sat, Mar 28, 2004 at 10:33:47PM -0700, Bdale Garbee wrote:
> I've agreed to represent Debian on a panel that's being put together by Jon
> "maddog" Hall at the upcoming ClusterWorld conference and expo in San Jose.
>
> During the discussion, I'd like to be able to reference actual clusters that
> are running Debian. I know about a few, but...
>
> This is a request for information about your use of Debian on clusters!
>
> I'd like to know what your cluster is used for, why you picked Debian and
> whether you still think it was a good choice, and any particularly significant
> results you have achieved or things you have learned that are worthy of report.
Undergraduate Supercomputing Initiative:
http://www.baldric.uwo.ca/
Cluster:
- 32x HPPA systems
- 16x PowerPC systems for tinkering.
- 14x HPPA systems running with the cluster but not an active part.
- 4x Baystack 10/100 managed switches in a stack configuration.
- 2x i386 systems for tseting.
- 2x Alpha 1000/233 system for testing.
- 2x Sparc 32-bit systems for testing.
- 1x SMP i686 system for cross-compiling.
- 1x HPPA C3K system as master node, and 140GB's of NFS storage
for home spaces.
99% of these systems run unstable debian. On occasion we test
other clustering distros.
Images:
http://www.baldric.uwo.ca/article.php3?section=baldric&article=Pictures
Feel free to use these in your presentations!
Projects:
- Currently all educational.
- Showing people how to use a cluster.
= MPI programming.
- Introducing first years to UNIX.
- IEEE Technical Talks about how networking works in
the context of clustered systems.
Why use debian:
- deboostrap makes image creation easy.
- package maintenance is much lower than any other distro
- apt-proxy server allows package updates without exposing
the cluster to external networks, lessens network load too.
- small install image, most of the donated systems only had
500MB scsi disks.
- It was the only distro supporting hppa, who else supports
so many different hardware platforms? It makes producing
heterogeneous hardware clusters much easier when the software
platform is homogeneous over a long period of time!
= You can't say the same for other distros...
Was debian a good choice?
- Yes, for the reasons listed above.
Did we learn anything?
- Clusters are fun.
- Debian is fun.
- Linux is fun.
- I did mention this project is educational in nature?
Historical Information (1999)
- The first cluster to run at the University of Western Ontario
was started by Baldric, it was 16x PowerPC 604e 100MHz running
debian potato circa Winter 1999.
= There is something odd here, I know potato was
released officially April 14, 2000. I'm sure that
that I was installing and running on PowerPC before
then.
- http://www.baldric.uwo.ca/article.php3?section=baldric&article=knots
The initial prime alternating knot numbers were duplicated on
the PowerPC cluster.
Cheers,
Carlos.
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