How to setup clusters

[Net Llama!]

On 08/08/03 20:38, Alma J Wetzker wrote:

>>> "Net Llama!" <netllama at linux-sxs.org>
>>> Fri, 08 Aug 2003 15:26:25 -0700
>>> On 08/08/03 15:04, Alma J Wetzker wrote:
>>>
>>>> Our IEEE chapter at school is going to setup a linux cluster.  Does 
>>>> anyone have any experience/advice/interesting opinions about doing 
>>>> so? I am wondering if there is a good distro or any other 
>>>> wonderfulnes that will make the thing fun and last the semester.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> What do you plan to use it for?  'clusters' have *ALOT* of different 
>>> meanings and uses, and that is heavily dependent on how you set one up.
> 
> 
> We plan on using it to learn how to setup clusters.

Let me rephrase.  You're asking 'how do i setup a cluster'.  I stated that 
there is no such thing as one type of cluster.  Its as if you asked 'how do 
i create software?'.  There's not a single type of software, or even a 
single programming language to write the software.

> My personal interest is distributed applications, so a virtual machine 
> running a database would be good.  But we don't have the disk space to 
> make it worthwhile.  I hope to use more than one configuration before we 
> are done.

Well, there are alot of different types of databases out there, some with 
excellent clustering support, some without.  Oracle & DB2 have pretty 
decent distributed processing support.  The amount of diskspace isn't 
really an issue unless you plan to start dumping large chunks of data into 
the DB.  Otherwise, a database will remain as small as you want it to.

Like i already said, clusters are not a singular thing, like apache, or 
fortran programming.  Its a very broad field, and you need to think about 
what part of it you're interested in persuing, as there isn't a single 
method that applies to everything.  A cluster is just more than one 
physical computer working together to accomplish a single task.  Be it data 
storage, numerical computation, graphic rendering, or something else 
altogether.  Once you figure that out with a degree of specificity, then 
you can move towards determining how to set one up.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                       	       netllama at linux-sxs.org
Linux Step-by-step & TyGeMo: 		    http://netllama.ipfox.com

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