Thanks, Orna. Very useful info. Still some question/thoughts inline... Cheers, Guy
> Regarding mosix/openmosix: After several years of considering and > convincing regarding this issue, I decided to avoid installing any of > them. It is not worth it. I send batch jobs via the batch queueing system, > and parallel jobs use pvm or mpi (which can be integrated with openPBS). > So far, I have not seen anything that needs more than that, and it is not > worth the risk of running something outside the mainstream in the kernel, > which means it is far less tested, and interacts closely with the > program. [Guy] One of my biggest concerns is the ease of use. Reading the Oscar's documentation I noticed that the job submission/distribution process is far from being intuitive. What I have is a bunch of researchers who are very smart at what they do, but most of them will scold me if the job submission involves some interaction with additional tools. Using pvm/mpi in Oscar (at least according to the docs) would require some manual fiddling on the user side. With *Mosix the process is much more user friendly. > > > - Long shot: the documentation states that only RHEL 3 Update > > 2/3 are supported. Any chance someone witnessed or deployed it on RHEL3 > > Update 4 ? > > I can check this when I am back in Israel (next week). But I doubt we have > installed something advanced. [Guy] Thanks. > Clip is closed source, given only to those in commercial contract with > Amnon Barak's team (MOSIX) or as a favour from this team. I am told OSCAR > management is easier than clip version 1 (or was this 1.2?). I did not get > a chance to compare it to CLIP 2.0, which is the new, closely-kept version > - did not see any site with it. [Guy] I see... The info I have is about CLIP 2.0 and the feedback is quite positive, but I doubt we will ever go the commercial contract route for this implementation. > Watch for NFS troubles - what do you intend to use for storage? > Build the network according to the kind of HPC you are planning. > How do you intend to monitor network usage? [Guy] We are talking roughly about ten dual 1.8Ghz workstations for the use of 3-4 researchers who will be running CPU intensive jobs. A lot of image processing with minimal load on the network/storage. All of them will sit on a dedicated switch - from our previous experience with OpenMosix the network/storage were never a bottleneck. Ideally, any submitted job should use all the nodes and chew up any CPU cycles available. The nodes will also act as users second desktop, so the job submission should be available from any node (makes me wonder how Matlab will play in that mix). I have no intension putting the nodes on a separate network segment/VLAN - I need all the nodes fully routed and accessible from anywhere. I think I'll try installing OpenMosix kernel, disabling OSCAR's HPC related modules and using OSCAR only for nodes deployment/management/image updates, but I'm open to suggestions. In any case, looks like I need to hit some more docs to get a better grasp of what I am dealing with. ================================================================To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
