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

[Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org>]

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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.

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/cluster/#doc_chap2

> 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.

Joel Martin has previously posted Lustre ebuilds to the list (for both 
client and server, I thinkg). You may be interested. We'll want to get 
them into portage at some point, so there's no requirement that you use 
Suse server-side.

> 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.

The main difference is that, since we're "live," you need to consider 
how you want to deal with upgrades. You may wish to pick a static 
portage tree, import it into some sort of version control, and 
selectively import changes you want (probably just security bumps, which 
you can find using the wonderful glsa-check tool from gentoolkit).

I've got a glsa-check wrapper that I use to make things a little easier, 
which shows and optionally applies applicable updates. I attached it.

Thanks,
Donnie

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