Super Computer Question

g4m3rof1337

g4m3rof1337

Active Member
Would there be a benefit to clustering several computers, with the same specifications, and making them connect to a main computer, as one.

I've researched this, and just found Super Computers, but I am looking at smaller scale ones.
 
This response is geared for supercomputers but i think this applies to clusters in general (correct me if im wrong).

From http://www.computerforum.com/106212-see-supercomputer.html
Motorxdude said:
O and the answer to if it can run crisis is no, it cannot. Supercomputers are only intended to run parallel processes (kinda like F@H where each computer is giving a project and it submits it when done), so you have one computer (the fastest computer) as the head node, and that node gives assignments to each node. Then when they are finished they submit the data back to the head node. This is why there is such a demand for high bandwidth when clustering.
Click to expand...

From this, I would assume it would depend on the way you arrange the computers. As for every day tasks (web, email, gaming etc), from this description it does not sound like it would yield much gain, if even possible.

I think clusters are for larger tasks (computing rendering etc).

This is just my understanding. Every cluster ive heard of (not many) but including smaller ones use a node system so tasks are assigned and divided.
 
Yeah, I'd want a mini cluster for general stuff, and gaming. If I find a lot of benefits, I'll do it, but if not, I wont.


Thanks.
 
I do stuff like this as a hobby... Plus, if you did this for F@H, which is what I am gonna do, you could get your name spoken of a few times...
 
You can't cluster Windows computers that I know of, unless you're running a distributed computer app. Clustering refers to servers, and as far as I know the only Windows that does that is Windows Server. It would have no practical application in your home, and is really only used, depending on the cluster, for failover, redundancy or both.
 
SirKenin said:
You can't cluster Windows computers that I know of, unless you're running a distributed computer app. Clustering refers to servers, and as far as I know the only Windows that does that is Windows Server. It would have no practical application in your home, and is really only used, depending on the cluster, for failover, redundancy or both.
Click to expand...

You can but it's just better to use Red Hat or something...
 
Thanks IntelCrazy, I wanted to know this information, just to know it really, but had a thought it might be interesting to actually do it.
 
http://www.devbuilder.org/article/24

Building Windows Clusters

Hardware
Before starting, you have to have following hardware and software. You have at least two computers with Windows NT, SP6 or Windows 2000 networked with some sort of LAN equipment (hub, switch etc.). Ensure during the Windows set up phase that TCP/IP, and NETBUI are installed, and that the network is started, with all the network cards detected and the correct drivers installed. We will call these two computers as Windows cluster. Ok, now you need some sort of software that will help you to develop, deploy and execute application over this cluster. This software is the core what makes a Windows cluster possible.

Software
The Message Passing Interface (MPI) is an evolving de facto standard for supporting cluster computing based on message passing. There are several implementations of this standard. In this article, we will use MPICH, which is freely available, and you can download it from here for windows clustering, and find related documentation here. Please read Quick Start.pdf and manual before starting following steps.

Step 1: Download and unzip nt-mpich-1.3.0-a.zip onto any folder (for example C:\NT-MPICH) and share this folder with write permission.

Step 2: Copy all files with .dll extension from C:\NT-MPICH\libto folder C:\Windows\system32

Step 3: Install the Cluster Manager Service on each host you want to use for remote execution of MPI processes. For installation, start rcluma-install.bat (located in subdirectory C:\NT-MPICH\bin) by double-clicking from local or network-drive. You must have administrator rights on the hosts to install the service.

Step 4: Follow step 1 and 2 for each node in the cluster (we will name each computer in the cluster as node)

Step 5: Now Start RexecShell (from folder C:\NT-MPICH\bin) by double-clicking it. Open the configuration dialog by pressing F2. The distribution contains a precompiled example MPI program named cpi.exe (located in NT-MPICH/bin). Choose it as the actual program. Make sure that each host can reach cpi.exe at the specified path. Choose ch_wsock as active plug-in. Select the hosts to compute on. On the tab 'Account', enter your username, domain and password, which need to be valid on each host chosen. Press OK to confirm your selections. The Start Button (from Window RexecShell) is now enabled and can be pressed to start cpi.exe on all chosen hosts. The output will be displayed in separate windows.

Congratulation your supercomputer (Windows cluster) is ready to run MPI programs!
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I wouldn't run it with Vista, I would use 2000/XP or a Linux distro

EDIT: I have found the best way to do it... Gotta use Gentoo Linux and MOSIX/openMOSIX..
 
Last edited:
INTELCRAZY said:
http://www.devbuilder.org/article/24



I wouldn't run it with Vista, I would use 2000/XP or a Linux distro
Click to expand...

SirKenin was right, there is no native way to cluster windows machines, you must use third party.

Clustering is good for servers, because not only will it run in parallel processing mode but also distributed processing mode. Apple has a server side technology called xgrid which will farm out data to windows and OS X clients and the data is crunched and then sent back. There is a third party client you install on windows to accomplish this, and there is also a client built into OS X. I have looked into it but well, I have way too much on my plate to even think about implementing it any time soon, plus we would need a slight infrastructure overhaul.

here is an example of how it is applied in real world situations

http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/louisville/

However, I think most of you aren't grasping that your application has to support it. No end user application (or game) support this. Think about it, you cluster say 3 mid range currently out desktops on a gigabit ethernet. You run an application and it distributes all jobs and tasks amongst the three computers, by the time the data gets sent, crunched and sent back you are most likely losing performance because it could be done faster locally. The FSB on your new computer is faster than gigabit ethernet, and well unless you are running a high end switch you are getting a plethora of packet loss and overhead from your switch being cheap.

So, really you would not benefit anything from running a cluster at home, unless you really knew what you were doing and could develop your own applications to distribute jobs over like a beowulf system or something of the like.
 
tlarkin said:
SirKenin was right, there is no native way to cluster windows machines, you must use third party.

Clustering is good for servers, because not only will it run in parallel processing mode but also distributed processing mode. Apple has a server side technology called xgrid which will farm out data to windows and OS X clients and the data is crunched and then sent back. There is a third party client you install on windows to accomplish this, and there is also a client built into OS X. I have looked into it but well, I have way too much on my plate to even think about implementing it any time soon, plus we would need a slight infrastructure overhaul.

here is an example of how it is applied in real world situations

http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/louisville/

However, I think most of you aren't grasping that your application has to support it. No end user application (or game) support this. Think about it, you cluster say 3 mid range currently out desktops on a gigabit ethernet. You run an application and it distributes all jobs and tasks amongst the three computers, by the time the data gets sent, crunched and sent back you are most likely losing performance because it could be done faster locally. The FSB on your new computer is faster than gigabit ethernet, and well unless you are running a high end switch you are getting a plethora of packet loss and overhead from your switch being cheap.

So, really you would not benefit anything from running a cluster at home, unless you really knew what you were doing and could develop your own applications to distribute jobs over like a beowulf system or something of the like.
Click to expand...

What about using this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand
 
Never used one, don't know much about it. However, I have seen demos of very high dollar SANs, running fibre channel and very high speed RAID arrays, clustered together. Those get very expensive.
 
An Adaptec single channel PCI-X RAID 5 card is $800 CAD (I know, I have one sitting here beside me). You don't have to use a managed switch. Mine is a Linksys "Smart Switch" which is capable of doing roughly the same thing for half the price.

Where clusters really excel is either web servers, application servers or databases. These ones sitting here beside me I designed and built for a manufacturing plant using a specialized CMS software package. A database would use a failover cluster in a plant of their size, so that if one server went down, the other would kick in.

Only problem... The one server is $4000 with the software, the other is $12,000. Maybe not exactly something you'd want to park in your livingroom. The noise from them will drown out a TV without a problem and within 5 minutes of them being powered up they raise the temp in the room at least 5 degrees (and that's a good sized room).

Then the other uses for clusters are load balancing (for high traffic servers, such as web servers), high performance clusters which provide load balancing, avalability and scalability, application clusters, etc.

The whole idea of clusters is not really distributed computing in the F@H sense, but high availability and balanced loads, so one server doesn't puke. SQL Server (which this one server is) can use the clusters to provide redundancy... clustering RAID 5 servers is a beautiful, albeit brutally expensive, thing.

So the question really isn't "can I do it?" as much as it's "what the hell is the point?"

lol
 
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