High Performance Linux Clusters with OSCAR, Rocks, OpenMosix, and MPI

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High Performance Linux Clusters with OSCAR, Rocks, OpenMosix, and MPI

By Joseph D. Sloan
First Edition November 2004
Pages: 368
ISBN 10: 0-596-00570-9 | ISBN 13: 9780596005702

Book description

This new guide covers everything you need to plan, build, and deploy a high-performance Linux cluster. You'll learn about planning, hardware choices, bulk installation of Linux on multiple systems, and other basic considerations. Learn about the major free software projects and how to choose those that are most helpful to new cluster administrators and programmers. Guidelines for debugging, profiling, performance tuning, and managing jobs from multiple users round out this immensely useful book.
Full Description

To the outside world, a "supercomputer" appears to be a single system. In fact, it's a cluster of computers that share a local area network and have the ability to work together on a single problem as a team. Many businesses used to consider supercomputing beyond the reach of their budgets, but new Linux applications have made high-performance clusters more affordable than ever. These days, the promise of low-cost supercomputing is one of the main reasons many businesses choose Linux over other operating systems. This new guide covers everything a newcomer to clustering will need to plan, build, and deploy a high-performance Linux cluster. The book focuses on clustering for high-performance computation, although much of its information also applies to clustering for high-availability (failover and disaster recovery). The book discusses the key tools you'll need to get started, including good practices to use while exploring the tools and growing a system. You'll learn about planning, hardware choices, bulk installation of Linux on multiple systems, and other basic considerations. Then, you'll learn about software options that can save you hours--or even weeks--of deployment time. Since a wide variety of options exist in each area of clustering software, the author discusses the pros and cons of the major free software projects and chooses those that are most likely to be helpful to new cluster administrators and programmers. A few of the projects introduced in the book include:

MPI, the most popular programming library for clusters. This book offers simple but realistic introductory examples along with some pointers for advanced use.
OSCAR and Rocks, two comprehensive installation and administrative systems
openMosix (a convenient tool for distributing jobs), Linux kernel extensions that migrate processes transparently for load balancing
PVFS, one of the parallel filesystems that make clustering I/O easier
C3, a set of commands for administering multiple systems

Ganglia, OpenPBS, and cloning tools (Kickstart, SIS and G4U) are also covered. The book looks at cluster installation packages (OSCAR & Rocks) and then considers the core packages individually for greater depth or for folks wishing to do a custom installation. Guidelines for debugging, profiling, performance tuning, and managing jobs from multiple users round out this immensely useful book.

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"High Performance Linux Clusters is remarkably well presented; the text is supported with helpful diagrams and plenty of example code."
-- Major Keary, PC Update

"The book is quite instructive. Sloan uses as few technical words as possible. Almost anyone can understand his explanation, even people with no previous experience with the necessary hardware; Linux; administration tools; or parallel programming, debugging, and security issues. The MPI chapters are concise and straightforward—concrete examples for concrete problems. Sloan’s explanation of the MPI directives for parallelizing seems more understandable than the explanations in the classics by William Gropp, Ewing Lusk, and Anthony Skjellum, at least for beginners. Once you’ve read and understood Sloan’s book, you’ll be better prepared for Gropp and his coauthors...Within this rather small, manageable book, you’ll encounter most of the basics for starting a Linux cluster, whether you plan to actually perform heavy calculations or just want to learn how to construct a cluster with the old PCs you might have. I recommend this inexpensive book both for students and full-fledged researchers."
-- Arturo Ortiz-Tapia, IEEE Computer Society

"Joseph Sloan's High Performance Linux Clusters provides a wealth of information on the subject of Linux clusters. Sloan guides you through the decision-making process for building cluster computers, installing the right software, and writing the programs to solve a particular problem... Even as someone who is not planning to build a Linux cluster in the near future, I felt confident because of the detail of Sloan's installation instructions. I did not find myself feeling lost or unsure of how a particular package should be installed or used, as can be the case when some authors decide to mumble over important instructions. The number of topics covered in the book is also impressive. Someone new to the topic of clusters is given the information they need to get started and advice on how best to approach this rather complex undertaking."
--Gregory Lapouchnian, C/C++ Users Journal, June 2005

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