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

Preface

Clusters built from open source software, particularly based on the GNU/Linux operating system, are increasingly popular. Their success is not hard to explain because they can cheaply solve an ever-widening range of number-crunching applications. A wealth of open source or free software has emerged to make it easy to set up, administer, and program these clusters. Each individual package is accompanied by documentation, sometimes very rich and thorough. But knowing where to start and how to get the different pieces working proves daunting for many programmers and administrators.

This book is an overview of the issues that new cluster administrators have to deal with in making clusters meet their needs, ranging from the initial hardware and software choices through long-term considerations such as performance.

This book is not a substitute for the documentation that accompanies the software that it describes. You should download and read the documentation for the software. Most of the documentation available online is quite good; some is truly excellent.

In writing this book, I have evaluated a large number of programs and selected for inclusion the software I believe is the most useful for someone new to clustering. While writing descriptions of that software, I culled through thousands of pages of documentation to fashion a manageable introduction. This book brings together the information you’ll need to get started. After reading it, you should have a clear idea of what ...