[Tfug] recommendations for installing a cluster..

[Tom Rini]

On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 09:22:50AM -0600, Jeremy D Rogers wrote:

> I'm looking for opinions or advice on reconfiguring and reinstalling my
> lab's cluster.

The "cluster" I work with / use is may or may not fit the definition of
a real cluster.  It's identical nodes with some shared storage (via FC
and GFS) but actual usage is single node stuff (I'm looking for time to
look into distcc tho).  That said...

Ubuntu Server is great.  And if you go with say 8.10 now (or 9.04 in
April) you can just do yearly full upgrades, in a scheduled way, to stay
on a supported version.  For chroot vs local install, if you can limit
package installation to a small number of people, I'd really go with a
local install, and just update everything monthly.  But it really
depends on where the commonly used programs are run.  If say
/usr/bin/gcc is infrequently used, and /home/someguy/mysim is always
being used, then you could probably get away with setting things up
diskless (just be aware there is some work in setting things up for N
clients to use a "single" chroot for NFS, but bind mounts make this an
easier to solve problem than it used to be).

> 5. Now this one is far less important, but if I go with diskless boot nodes
> and am using the storage server for /home, that leaves 32 nodes with 100GB
> drives in them not doing anything. Also, that 400GB raid5 array on the
> masternode. Any clever use I should put these disks to?

I'm really a fan of a local /scratch per node.  Just make sure it's
known that this area is not backed up and of course, local.  I'd also
reconfigure the master's raid1/5 ;)

-- 
Tom Rini