I notice that Scyld is notable by it's absence from this discussion. Is that due to cost, or bad/no experience, or other factors? There is a lot of interest in it around my company lately.
Dave Cunningham -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew M.A. Cater Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 8:40 AM To: beowulf@beowulf.org Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Which distro for the cluster? On Wed, Dec 27, 2006 at 06:46:25PM +0100, Chetoo Valux wrote: > Dear all, > > As a Linux user I've worked with several distros as RedHat, SuSE, Debian and > derivatives, and recently Gentoo. > > Now I face the challenge of building a HPC for scientific calculations, and > I wonder which distro would suit me best. As a Gentoo user, I've recognised > the power of customisation, optimisation and lightweight system, for > instance my 4 years old laptop flies like a youngster, and some desktops > too. So I thought about building the HPC nodes (8+1 master) with Gentoo .... > Don't use Gentoo unless you've a full, fast connection to the internet _AND_ you're prepared for your cluster to be internet connected while you build it. This IMHO. Scientific calculations: Quantian? Debian. Debian for the number of math and other packages and the ease of install. Over 8 nodes, it should be relatively easy to set up. But it depends what you want to do, what other users want to do etc. etc. > But then it comes the administration and maintenance burden, which for me it > should be the less, since my main task here is research ... so browsing the > net I found Rocks Linux with plenty of clustering docs and administration > tools & guidelines. I feel this should be the choice in my case, even if I > sacrifice some computation efficiency. Rocks / Warewulf perhaps. If you just want something you can build/update/maintain in your sleep, I'd still suggest Debian - if only because a _minimal_ install on the nodes is as small as you want it to be - and because it's fairly consistent. Your cluster - your choice but you may have to justify it to your co-workers. Andy > > Any advice on this will be appreciated. > > Chetoo. > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
