On Sat, Mar 28, 2004 at 10:33:47PM -0700, Bdale Garbee wrote: > I've agreed to represent Debian on a panel that's being put together by Jon > "maddog" Hall at the upcoming ClusterWorld conference and expo in San Jose. > > During the discussion, I'd like to be able to reference actual clusters that > are running Debian. I know about a few, but... > > This is a request for information about your use of Debian on clusters! > > I'd like to know what your cluster is used for, why you picked Debian and > whether you still think it was a good choice, and any particularly significant > results you have achieved or things you have learned that are worthy of report.
Undergraduate Supercomputing Initiative: http://www.baldric.uwo.ca/ Cluster: - 32x HPPA systems - 16x PowerPC systems for tinkering. - 14x HPPA systems running with the cluster but not an active part. - 4x Baystack 10/100 managed switches in a stack configuration. - 2x i386 systems for tseting. - 2x Alpha 1000/233 system for testing. - 2x Sparc 32-bit systems for testing. - 1x SMP i686 system for cross-compiling. - 1x HPPA C3K system as master node, and 140GB's of NFS storage for home spaces. 99% of these systems run unstable debian. On occasion we test other clustering distros. Images: http://www.baldric.uwo.ca/article.php3?section=baldric&article=Pictures Feel free to use these in your presentations! Projects: - Currently all educational. - Showing people how to use a cluster. = MPI programming. - Introducing first years to UNIX. - IEEE Technical Talks about how networking works in the context of clustered systems. Why use debian: - deboostrap makes image creation easy. - package maintenance is much lower than any other distro - apt-proxy server allows package updates without exposing the cluster to external networks, lessens network load too. - small install image, most of the donated systems only had 500MB scsi disks. - It was the only distro supporting hppa, who else supports so many different hardware platforms? It makes producing heterogeneous hardware clusters much easier when the software platform is homogeneous over a long period of time! = You can't say the same for other distros... Was debian a good choice? - Yes, for the reasons listed above. Did we learn anything? - Clusters are fun. - Debian is fun. - Linux is fun. - I did mention this project is educational in nature? Historical Information (1999) - The first cluster to run at the University of Western Ontario was started by Baldric, it was 16x PowerPC 604e 100MHz running debian potato circa Winter 1999. = There is something odd here, I know potato was released officially April 14, 2000. I'm sure that that I was installing and running on PowerPC before then. - http://www.baldric.uwo.ca/article.php3?section=baldric&article=knots The initial prime alternating knot numbers were duplicated on the PowerPC cluster. Cheers, Carlos. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
