[Beowulf] Computation on the head node

[Joe Landman]

Vlad Manea wrote:
> Hi Joe,
> 
> Thanks. Probably I will go with ROCKS.
> For the moment I have 5 machines with 4 AMDs on them
> and I will use one as headnode and the other 4 as comp. nodes.
> The cluster will be dedicated to run fluid dynamics codes.

Hi Vlad:

   Are these locally developed codes or commercial ones?

> As for IO, I use a Gigabit switch with 48 Gb backplane bandwidth,
> which probably might be sufficient for a while...

   Possibly.  Which switch are you going to use?  You are looking (for 
MPI) to optimize the port-port latency (and make sure you have good NICs 
on the units).  For file IO, if these are fluent runs, how large are the 
case files?  We have customers with 20+ GB sized files these days.

> I also intend to use both NICs on my servers.
> However the cluster I intend to build is more experimental
> and will be probably limited to 32 (64? if $$ available...) nodes.

   Ok.  I might suggest focusing some of your money on the gigabit 
infrastructure (general case) ... good gigabit switches can have a 
positive impact upon multiple other subsystems.

Joe

> 
> Vlad
> _____________


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Joseph Landman, Ph.D
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