Re: How to setup clusters

[Alma J Wetzker]

"Net Llama!" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Fri, 08 Aug 2003 21:03:34 -0700

On 08/08/03 20:38, Alma J Wetzker wrote:

"Net Llama!" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Fri, 08 Aug 2003 15:26:25 -0700
On 08/08/03 15:04, Alma J Wetzker wrote:
Our IEEE chapter at school is going to setup a linux cluster.  Does 
anyone have any experience/advice/interesting opinions about doing 
so? I am wondering if there is a good distro or any other 
wonderfulnes that will make the thing fun and last the semester.
What do you plan to use it for?  'clusters' have *ALOT* of different 
meanings and uses, and that is heavily dependent on how you set one up.
We plan on using it to learn how to setup clusters.
Let me rephrase.  You're asking 'how do i setup a cluster'.  I stated 
that there is no such thing as one type of cluster.  Its as if you asked 
'how do i create software?'.  There's not a single type of software, or 
even a single programming language to write the software.

Sorry Lonnie, I do know the difference but I really don't have a single 
type of cluster in mind.  What I meant to ask is if anyone on the list 
has setup a cluster, if so, what type and what distribution was used?

I would like to setup a cluster consisting of a single virtual machine 
as I think that can be the most flexible.  As I am not the only person 
working on the project I can't be more specific for a few weeks.  I am 
just trying to use personal resources in addition to google and other 
various search engines and 900 pages of documentation.

My personal interest is distributed applications, so a virtual machine 
running a database would be good.  But we don't have the disk space to 
make it worthwhile.  I hope to use more than one configuration before 
we are done.
Well, there are alot of different types of databases out there, some 
with excellent clustering support, some without.  Oracle & DB2 have 
pretty decent distributed processing support.  The amount of diskspace 
isn't really an issue unless you plan to start dumping large chunks of 
data into the DB.  Otherwise, a database will remain as small as you 
want it to.

Most of my paid work has been Oracle where I end up using triggers and 
stuff to accomplish what I need to get done.  I am trying to figure out 
MySQL right now and perhaps PostgreSQL next year.  Most of my test data 
is quite large as I need to test MANY configurations and options.

Like i already said, clusters are not a singular thing, like apache, or 
fortran programming.  Its a very broad field, and you need to think 
about what part of it you're interested in persuing, as there isn't a 
single method that applies to everything.  A cluster is just more than 
one physical computer working together to accomplish a single task.  Be 
it data storage, numerical computation, graphic rendering, or something 
else altogether.  Once you figure that out with a degree of specificity, 
then you can move towards determining how to set one up.
Since I don't know, or care, which direction I am going with this, ANY 
help or direction from the list is valuable.  (Especially questions like 
yours!)

Thanks!

    -- Alma

_______________________________________________
Linux-users mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc -> http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users