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Mandrake Announces Turn-Key Clustering Distribution
joestar writes "According to their website, Mandrake and partners (Bull, INPG/INRIA...) have launched an 'easy-to-deploy easy-to-use Linux Clustering solution,' that has already been tested on a 40-node cluster. Of course, it's published under the GPL, comes with parallel applications, and is available for download as an ISO. It seems the project is financed by French government. It's great because I've always dreamed of having my own supercomputer at home."
1. This one is nromal.
- Phase 1: Develop and release a specialized Linux distribution that contains everything needed to quickly deploy a ready-to-run cluster.
2. I think this means ?????
- Phase 2 (early 2003): Release of specialized administration, control and monitoring tools for the clustering solution, plus added support for Itanium 2 architecture.
3. And finally, PROFIT!!!!!
- Phase 3 (end of 2003): Release of specialized tools and applications for development in parallel environment, final integration and tests, release of the final stable version.
Good. I hope this will convince CEOs in large companies that Linux clusters and scales better than Windows (well, that's obvious) or proprietary Unices. But the penguins can't be too confident, as Sun is up to no good here, hawking distributed clustering as a brand new technology when it certainly isn't, and catering to Fortune 500s and other large companies.
If we want to make our inroads we must do so now.
"I am root. Bow before me." To this I say, "You are root, and you bear the sins of the world upon your shoulders."
I recently acquired 30 PCs in the Pentium-II range from a local community college, for free, as they were actually headed for the landfill.
Just as a weekend project, I was going to use the Beowulf software, but this CLIC software looks quite interesting, considering it's a total package and probably comes with the ease of use of Mandrake, so I'm going to give it a try.
All I have to do is get the PCs out of the shed, make a lot of CAT5 cables, format quite a few hd's with CLIC, and build my own Beo^H^H^HCLIC cluster out of crappy Pentium II's and do something stupid like calculate PI to a googol digits, even though my power bill will probably be insane.
Wish me luck, I'll keep you posted!
Imagine a beowolf cluster of these!!! ;-)
:-)
Seriously though. How cool is Mandrake? First to LSB, full GPL'd version of cd avail for download (damn you SuSE!!), lots of freebies, like the Single network firewall and the old Corporate server(i loved this back in the day), their prosuite stomps any other distro (and for $135 without doc's!), oh and mandrake runs on XBox!!
Now a cluster??
My only complaint is they are an RPM-based distro and I like apt-get. Something like the freebsd ports collection would be nice too though, but i just hate those rpm's.
Just so you don't think I'm a linux leech I have bought 3 version of linux inlcuding mandrakes prosuite, i can't donate code but i can donate ca$h.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
I wonder whether non-volatile storage makes sense on the nodes at all- isn't it the memory and CPU of each node that is abused by large computations? The way I read this (from the press release), this is a solution for number crunching, not for data warehousing, and the nodes boot off the network anyway.
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but we will meanwhile agree to meet them
One could argue that those businesses that really need a cluster will likely buy one preconfigured. Those that do the preconfiguration probably have an established technique (distro, tools, etc.) and won't likely go for something from Mandrake. The hobbiest who builds one to learn about clusters more than likely wants to do everything himself (like start with a strip down install of slackware and build it up from there). That really only leaves the hobbiest that wants to do parallel programming but doesn't want to build the cluster. Not a very large segment.
End of Line.
Check it out: Rocksclusters
Does MPI/LAM run on it?
I have lately started being more and more convinced that one of the key issues to success of open source - in a business sense, will be the fact that it is much easier for government organizations and other similar-type organizations to fund them without being guestioned and having put their moral in doubt. Why? Every single time that Microsoft, Adobe or some other closed source company is looking for government money, the politicians are facing a rather guestion: "In what light will this put us?"
Now, it would be interesting to see some years further and see how this all changes. I am convinced that there will much more public discussion on the subject whether this is discrimative against the non-open source companies. In my opinion it basicly is not, because being open source, it benefits everyone and not just a single company - but still, there's still someone who benefits most.
Now they need to let Mandrake Club members pool their resources to create an internet wide cluster for all Mandrake users. Join the club, get to play on the club cluster.
I don't know what the hell I would use it for / get out of it, but it would be a nice way to support your favorite distro by donating unused cpu time to MCC (Mandrake Club Cluster)
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
This is a freebie from the French governement really. They hired MandrakeSoft to create it for them, and MandrakeSoft turned around and said something along the lines of "You realize we're going to give this to everyone to play with and use don't you?" To which the French government replied "I don't care, I'm not gonna sell the thing, I just need it for virtual weapons testing, did i say weapons testing, I meant happy camps."
So Mandrake didn't really do this to make more money off it, they're already getting paid for it, we just get a nice new toy to play with.
put the what in the where?
yes, they're better off, because you don't need to do jack on the computational nodes.
/home is mounted via nfs from a disk array, so each individual node has access to the users' programs. we use fast ethernet for that, since it doesn't put that much strain on the network, and myrinet for the computational nodes to exchange data.
no, they're not better off, because where is your swap going to be? or temporary data generated by individual jobs?
i run a 100 node computational cluster. the nodes boot with pxe, then if they are already installed, they simply boot to their local scsi drives. only
i've had more problems with ram and myrinet than the 'moving parts', aka drives.
--- d'oh
I've got machines all over the place, and have long fantasized about setting up a cluster for the fun of it. I've read a little about Beowulf and one or two other open source clustering technologies, but have never had the gumption to crack the books and set one up. Mostly, I think, because I'm not sure what I'd do with it when it was ready.
Would anyone care to post a 2-3 paragraph summary of what Joe PC Hobbyist (e.g. someone like me, with many semi-obsolete PCs lying around the house) might be able to do with the CLIC software? Would it only be able to run applications written for CLIC (oh.), or would the cluster behave like one giant, amalgamated Mandrake box (cool!) ?