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Debian Cluster Replaces Supercomputer For Weather Forecasting
wazza brings us a story about the Philippine government's weather service (PAGASA), which has recently used an eight-PC Debian cluster to replace an SGI supercomputer. The system processes data from local sources and the Global Telecommunication System, and it has reduced monthly operational costs by a factor of 20. Quoting:
"'We tried several Linux flavours, including Red Hat, Mandrake, Fedora etc,' said Alan Pineda, head of ICT and flood forecasting at PAGASA. 'It doesn't make a dent in our budget; it's very negligible.' Pineda said PAGASA also wanted to implement a system which is very scalable. All of the equipment used for PICWIN's data gathering comes off-the-shelf, including laptops and mobile phones to transmit weather data such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, cloud formation and atmospheric pressure from field stations via SMS into PAGASA's central database."
Actually, Debian is intended for servers and runs on more architectures than any other distro. The whole reason for the long testing cycle on Debian is to make sure it's as stable as possible so it can sit on a server and need little or no attention for days, weeks, or even months at a time.
I hated Debian at first because it wasn't friendly, but I looked into it more and realized it was the best choice I could make for my production servers. I can set them up and check once a week or so and they're still chugging along without need of intervention.
I wouldn't use Debian on my desktop (I use Kubuntu), but it can't be beat for servers.
It's NOT a desktop distro. Especially compared to Mandr* or Ubuntu or many others out there.
Many distro's add kernel patches and add different drivers to the initrd.
Also the core os ( most minimal installation ) has many different tools and libs.
Also at time of release they can pick from many different versions of a single package.
That in combination with what version of GCC and compile flags can and does make a huge differance.
And at least with Debian you really do know how the systems was build, with RedHat I still wonder...
Marcel
Debian works out just fine for these kind of tasks. Here in the Netherlands the national compute cluster Lisa runs on Debian (http://www.sara.nl/userinfo/lisa/description/index.html) with 800~ to a 1000 nodes (I think the page needs updating by now).
Debian will run multiple services reliably under heavy load. From my limited experience, it's one of those distros where you "Set It And Forget It" and that's that.
Once you got it configured the way you want it, there's little intervention involved to maintaining it. It'll just keep chugging along. The keyword there is "correctly". Follow the readmes, howtos, and best practices, and you're golden.
It's also one of the oldest distributions which always kept to the spirit of GNU/Linux in general: community development and enrichment. Debian developers pride themselves on that spirit. To make the best software for humans. (At least that's what I gather from hanging out with Debian folk) These people are not only passionate in the software that they write, they do it without wanting anything in return, being humble in the way they do it, and wanting no reward for doing it. To them, their reward is in other people using their software and loving it! In my opinion they're not recognized enough.
But what do I know? I just use the software.
The binary package management really says it all.. you shouldn't be running anything but compiled source on a performance cluster.
/bin/ls though? I don't think it matters to anyone on a high performance cluster. Just so long as the cluster apps are optimised then the rest is just noise - better to have a system that's less work for your administrators so they can concentrate on what's important.
Wow - how many performance clusters do you run again?
Not that I run a "performance cluster" as such - but I do run a bunch of machines that are very busy, all on Debian.
You know what? We compile the couple of programs where CPU is the bottleneck from source. We also compile Cyrus IMAP from source because we apply a pile of patches, but if someone else was packaging up all those patches in upstream, I'd be happy for them to be compiled there. Disk IO is the issue with Cyrus, and a custom compile won't help with that.
Yeah, we build our own kernels as well - that's another point that's worth the effort to customise.
You don't have to wonder with RedHat. Just look at the SRPMs and see what patches they've applied.
jh
This is inaccurate, as a long time Debian user I really cannot resist in correcting them.
:)
> Debian "unstable" Sid is upgraded every day, or at least several times per week.
True.
> Debian "testing" is upgraded several times a month.
Wrong. Debian testing is updated automatically from packages in Debian unstable. The difference is simply that a package has to sit in Debian unstable for a few days, and no significant bugs can be introduced by the new package, before it is updated. Since the process is automatic, Debian testing is updated just slightly less continuously as unstable (it depends on the robot to check the package dependencies and bug reports rather than the maintainer to upload a new version).
The only time when the update rate is seen as low as less than that is when testing is in deep freeze, i.e., a new stable is about to be created.
> Debian "stable" is upgraded every one or two years.
It usually takes slightly longer than two years.
> The only one I have avoided is "Debian experimental"...
You cannot have a pure "Debian experimental" system. Debian experimental are subsystems that could have profound effect on the rest of the system, and so is provided for trial in isolation. E.g., back in the Gnome 1 to Gnome 2 transition days, or XFree 3 to XFree 4 days, these subsystems are tested in experimental before moving to unstable. These packages are supposed to be used on top of or to replace some unstable packages. Since they affects one particular subsystem, experienced testers can try one particular one based on their needs.