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Practical Beowulf

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the isn't-that-sweet dept.

elsewhere sent us Linux gushes savings for oil giant where you can read about the 32 node beowulf cluster being used by an oil company to replace IBM super computers.

3 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Beowulf Gushing by Jeff+Davis · · Score: 3

    We work for Amerada Hess on the beowulf project in the article. The author of the article was genuinely interested in how we used Linux and the difficulties in getting our upper managment to sign off on the project. The Beowulf project at Amerada Hess has really opened some eyes about the power of linux and hopefully this article will spread the word. Slashdot, Freshmeat, Redhat, Dejanews, Dell, and Paralogic have really helped this project run smoothly. I would highly recommend any company with a need for serious computation and a few programmers to give beowulf a shot. It really works and it can really save you money Jeff Davis Harry Duffey Amerada Hess Corporation Houston, TX

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    ....Jeff
  2. Re:Beowulf vs. IBM SP by Jeff+Davis · · Score: 3

    1) The main tools we had to create was a similar program to IBM's PSSPs dsh (distributed shell). However, we didn't take the time to put in all the features that IBM has in their dsh. As of right now, their is no similar corollary to PSSP on Linux that I'm aware of. There is a product called SMILE (SCMS) which we were implementing beowulf wasn't quite ready. There is also a product call masshosts by John Mechalas which we are looking at. One nice thing about Linux/Unix is that there is really that much need to use these tools that often as the systems run and run without much need for interference. We also used the kickstart process to install the nodes. The SP2 definitely has a one up on installation and you basically setup the install process and say go. several hours later the system is ready. however, linux installs about 6 times faster than AIX. 2) I guess i could put my little tool out somewhere but i really think others could probably do a much better job of writing a more complete tool. I will try to compile our config and post it. Jeff Davis and Harry Duffey

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    ....Jeff
  3. Beowulf vs. IBM SP by trichard · · Score: 3

    As an IBM SP specialist, and a Linux advocate I am impressed and intrigued by the Beowulf configuration built by Hess.

    The SP does have a fairly robust management toolset (PSSP) and uses kerberos with parallel commands for secure multi-node management.

    To be honest, I haven't read up on the capabilities of Beowulf but the impression I get from the article is that Hess had to write some apps to approximate the management capabilities of the SP.

    Two questions:

    1) Did Hess have to write these apps because Beowulf has a weak management system, or did they have to write them because Beowulf has a functional system that is different from what they were used to?

    2) Any chance that these management apps would be available under the GPL? Or even that more details about how they configured their systems will be posted?

    I'd love to be able to show my customers what Linux can do. Maybe Jeff Davis from the above post can shed some light on this.

    Ted Richardson