Clusters at Home?

dallastgi asks: "Sitting at my desk (a bargain second hand, due to lack of drawers) I looked at the side and realized I could build a nice little cluster, on either side of it. It already has wooden rails for rack mounts, holes in the back (from previous cables for computers) for cooling, and several computers in the cupboard. I just needs a door, power and cooling ducts. What is the best possible way to power 6+ motherboards, with a minimal amount of power-points and heat dissipation? What is the best way to cool those CPU's in minimal space? I'm sure many others on Slashdot have thought about their own clusters, so what are your recommendations on how to go about this?"

Comments

Cut to the chase

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sitting at my desk (a bargain second hand, due to lack of drawers) I looked at the side and realized I could build a nice little cluster, on either side of it. It already has wooden rails for rack mounts, holes in the back (from previous cables for computers) for cooling, and several computers in the cupboard. I just needs a door, power and cooling ducts. What is the best possible way to power 6+ motherboards, with a minimal amount of power-points and heat dissipation? What is the best way to cool those CPU's in minimal space? I'm sure many others on Slashdot have thought about their own clusters, so what are your recommendations on how to go about this?"

So, you're imagining a Beowulf cluster?

:)

Mini-itx cluster

[captainclever]

Mini-ITX Cluster has some useful info: http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/cluster/
But yeah.. what do you want the cluster for?

Re:Just curious

[arcanumas]

What are you going to do with that cluster? What made you suddenly realize you need it?

Probably all those beowulf cluster jokes. They get to you after a while you know.

Interesting Read on ITX Cluster

[SpinningAround]

This guy has an interesting article about a mini-itx cluster http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/cluster/

If you have the sort of application which scales well across a parallel processing environment then even the rather underpowered Via Mini-Itx boards would do a good job.

If you had a cluster of Prescott P4's you could probably heat your house all winter.

DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

Sitting at my desk (a bargain second hand, due to lack of drawers) I looked at the side and realized I could build a nice little cluster, on either side of it. It already has wooden rails for rack mounts, holes in the back (from previous cables for computers) for cooling, and several computers in the cupboard.

Never, ever, EVER put electronic parts anywhere in the general vicinity of wood - you're just asking for a conflagration if you do.

One of my best friends was in a professor in a big EE lab that had some benches and risers made of wood - and subsequently burned to the ground. Thereafter he spent several years of his life doing nothing but filling out millions of dollars worth of claims with insurance companies. Trust me - you do not want to go there.

[And he was one of the lucky ones - he got out unscathed.]

we built one of those last year

[dario_moreno]

Inspired by the discussions on the Beowulf mailing list we built in March 2003 a Beowulf of bare motherboards. You can see it (with text in French) on this site

Everything is made of metal, using ready-made beams to which we attached the motherboards with integrated Broadcom NICs. The cluster (diskless, headless) has been running fine since then. We have one power supply per node in order to maximize cooling and avoid wiring errors if adding motherboard plugs to power supplies : design was made with CATIA V5R6, calculations were done by graduate students in engineering using Flo Therm, and they predicted the temperature inside the cluster within 1 degree C : 27 degrees at steady state for 19 ambient.

The only detail we had forgotten was to make buttons for power and reset, since they are only to be found in ready-made cases ; we lost hours to find the proper socket size on Radiospares.

The design took about 20 hours, the fabrication about one week, software installation (having to find the proper driver for the NICs for clustermatic, setting up PXE) two days, we saved maybe 30 % of the total cost (here about 4000 euros for 8 Athlon 2400 nodes with 1 Gb RAM), had a lot of fun and learning.

What do you plan to DO with it?

[cr0sh]

Imagining and dreaming about having a cluster is one thing - knowing what to do with it once you have it built is another. Oftentimes I have dreamt and looked into what it would take (parts-wise and cost) to build a simple cluster, but in the end, I never went any further simply because I have no use for such a machine - it wasn't worth the time and expense, simply to be able to brag "yeah, I got a cluster at home" - BFD! It's like bragging you own a Humvee at home, and drive it around occasionally - but you have no clue how to off-road. At that point, it is simply a waste of money, resources, and time.

Perhaps you have an idea what you would do with it? If you don't, then I would suggest spending your time thinking about why you need a cluster, before building one. Building a small cluster is nearly (not quite) like putting together a Lego model - everything is commodity parts, from the boards to the cpus, to the ethernet cables and the switch, etc - even the cluster software is free and easily available. Putting together a cluster will teach you a little, but unless you have plans to use that knowledge personally and/or in the future (ie, job prospects), your time, money and resources may be better spent on other things.