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Linux Cluster on a Budget - "Off The Shelf" Components for High Performance Computing |
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I have been fascinated by clusters since 1995, when DEC VMS clusters where state-of-the-art and first Windows clusters emerged for simple storage sharing. Almost a decade later, cluster technology becomes mainstream through Linux, with falling hardware prices making it affordable for "home" use. What could I use a cluster for? Finally start my education in 3D Graphics Rendering and Computer Art Design? Donate power to SETI? Start a new research into the possibilities of crunching passwords?
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Diskless Lubics Linux Cluster, currently built out with 3 AMD 2600 CPU's: here is Dwarf 1 - 3
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I decided to shoot first and ask these questions later. The budget had top priority, the cost had to be kept down and soon a design emerged into reality: A Lubics frame system would house up to eight motherboard / CPU combo's, stacked up in shelfs of two systems. AMD CPU systems were choosen for the best price/performance value. The cluster members would be diskless and boot their OS from a cluster controller over the network. The cluster controller, currently my old Sparc Classic, is planned to be one of the 8 local boards: Say 'Hi' to "SnowWhite and the Seven Dwarfs". |
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Planned to be diskless systems, all I needed to add was very small power supplies and RAM memory. To ensure reliable uptime, I invested into smaller but high quality XMS memory sticks from Corsair. The frame planning and building turned out to be a lot of fun, these Lubic construction sets bring back memories of Lego and make childhood dreams come true. I had a local Plastics shop cut the acrylic shelfs to size and it proved to be a perfect fit. Once everything was installed, the operating system |
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and the boot process became my main concern. Most modern PC motherboards provide a network boot option via PXE in their BIOS, which I carefully researched beforehand by reading the Motherboard specs and manuals. PXE stands for Preboot EXecution Environment and is a DHCP extension to request a network bootstrap program via TFTP. I am using PXELinux from Peter Anvin. In the configuration, a kernel and its boot options (i.e. a ramdisk image) ... <page 2> |
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