Building a (Very) Low Cost Cluster
You don’t need a ton of cash to build a cluster. For a little over$ 1,000, you can even build one for use at home.
Tuesday, March 15th, 2005
Businesses and organizations are often reluctant to invest in new technologies, particularly if the investment is perceived to be large or if the technology is sufficiently different from the organization’s established technology. But such fears can limit the adoption of Linux and cluster computing innovations, even when those initiatives might save considerable time and money.
Fortunately, getting started or just experimenting with Linux and clusters can be done on a very small budget. Whether the goal is redundant, highly-available enterprise applications or high-performance computing (HPC), you can start small and grow the system as needed. And with the right applications or models, you can get as much performance as you can afford.
But for an organization with no means of launching a new information technology or HPC initiative, what’s the best way to get your feet wet? One way to experiment with cluster technology is to acquire a few old personal computers, hook them up, and load a Linux cluster distribution on them. While this approach has been shown to work (read about building the
Stone SouperComputer before at
http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-05/extreme_01.html), it has some disadvantages if the hardware is insufficient or if the nodes are too different from one another in speed or capability.
