On the subject of computational clusters, I personally get the picture
that most of the subscribers on this list, and such users of the
computational clusters, have more of a background in parallel
programming with science applications, as opposed to network and systems
administration. Is it the norm for the list that the cluster manager,
administrator, builder, programmer, and user roles are played by the
same person(s)? Should a high chool student that really wants to pursue
a career in computational clusters follow a programming path in computer
science or major in engineering or science, - with a minor in computer
science?
Thanks,
/usr/Todd
Systems Analyst & Administration
Jess Cannata wrote:
Beowulf clusters (computational clusters) are much more useful if you
have a problem that needs a lot of processing power/time and that can
be broken apart either as a distributed or parallel job. Molecular
modeling, rendering, and protein/gene searching are some good examples
of this type of problem. There are other types of clusters such as,
high-availability web and database clusters that serve different
purposes than Beowulf clusters.
Of course, I think that there is educational value to building a test
cluster even if you have no computationally intensive jobs to run on
it. It can definitely help you to better understand Linux and its
associated packages. And who knows, it might even get you interested
in parallel programming.
Jess
sNAAPS eLYK wrote:
Hello, I'm Kyle Spaans, finishing my last year of highschool in
Northern Ontario, Canada, and I'm a budding Linux user. Also being a
computer geek I've got lots of computers lying around my house. Since
I'll soon have the summer ahead of me before heading off to
Post-Secondary [uWaterloo], I've got one quick question.
Hypothetically speaking, I manage to get a small number of computers
together in a working cluster, but now what can I do with it?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] is my main computing hobby, but I already know what it
won't take advantage in a cluster. I also don't do any kind of
rendering or any large scale content creation, nor is writing
computer programs a skill that I have.
So, as far as I can see, hosting game servers or a few other kinds of
servers [ventrilo, web, ftp, streaming media], and having a sense of
pride in accomplishment are the only things that I'll get by building
a beowulf cluster. Is this more or less true, or am I missing something?
PS - if there is info about this that I obviously failed to find in
my searches, please tell me so!
Thanks for your time!
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