Re: [gentoo-cluster] examples of (large) Gentoo clusters

[Nick Anderson <nick@anders0n.net>]

Unfortunately we haven't done a gentoo cluster, though with portage 
maintenance would be easy. I did want to comment on your processor choice. If 
you choose quad core your only option currently is Intel clovertown. These 
machines are power hungry. I would reccomend waiting for the opteron quad 
core chips that will be comming out in 07. If your going dual core I would 
reccomend opterons. They don't require the fully buffered dimms which from 
our testing seem to draw about 15W per dimm. The other thing to consider is 
the characteristics of your code, what we have seen from the Intel cpus is 
jobs run quite well if they are serial jobs, however when running parallel 
jobs the opterons still win out.

Just some food for thought ....

On Friday 01 December 2006 17:16, Bryan Green wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I am looking for something of a survey of examples of Gentoo-driven
> clusters out there.  If such a survey has been done, perhaps someone point
> me to it. But I would like to hear from others on the list about their
> clusters.
>
> I am in the process of advocating for using Gentoo on a new cluster that we
> will be building.  The cluster will be a "hyperwall", meaning that each
> node will have graphics, forming a grid of displays for multi-parameter,
> multi-dimensional scientific visualization.  There will also be several
> disk servers which will run Suse in order to get Lustre support (Lustre
> support on the client side will be OS-neutral when the current beta is
> officially released).  In addition to graphics, the nodes will also be used
> for compute jobs (scientific), and may serve as a testbed for a production
> scientific computing environment.
>
> In the process of making my case, I've been asked what other examples there
> are of large Gentoo clusters.  This cluster will be 128 nodes (dual socket,
> dual or quad core).  Of particular interest are production and/or
> scientific environments - not so much database clusters, though all
> examples are of interest.  Use of MPI is particularly relevant.  Graphics
> clusters are also of interest of course.
>
> I'd be grateful for any feedback I get from others on the list about the
> clusters they maintain or use, and perhaps some comments about the efficacy
> of Gentoo in an environment where stability is very important, and how
> system administration compares to administration of a Suse or Redhat
> cluster.
>
> Thanks,
> -bryan
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