The Clustermatic Linux distribution, produced by the Cluster Research Lab at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is a collection of software packages that provides an infrastructure for small- to large-scale cluster computing.
The Clustermatic Linux distribution, produced by the Cluster Research Lab at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is a collection of software packages that provides an infrastructure for small- to large-scale cluster computing. Consisting of LinuxBIOS, BProc, and a job scheduler, Clustermatic 5 (released in November 2004) runs on 32- and 64-bit x86 platforms, as well as the 64-bit PowerPC processor. A number of large Linux clusters are running Clustermatic, including the 2,816 AMD Opteron processor cluster called “Lightning” at Los Alamos.
This month, let’s look at Clustermatic and build a small cluster using the software.
LinuxBIOS
LinuxBIOS (http://www.linuxbios.org) replaces the system BIOS with a little bit of hardware initialization code and a compressed Linux kernel that can be booted directly from a cold start. LinuxBIOS allows the operating system to control a cluster node from power on, and bypasses the proprietary, antiquated, slow, and often buggy BIOS in common use today. As a result, a cluster node can be booted and operational in as little as three seconds!
LinuxBIOS gunzip s a small Linux kernel straight out of non-volatile RAM (NVRAM), then loads a full kernel over Ethernet, Myrinet, Quadrics, SCI, or from some other device. Even this “full” kernel can be rather lightweight: nodes can be as simple as just a CPU and memory, with no hard disks, no floppies, and no filesystems, making for fast and efficient compute nodes with little autonomy.
A variety of motherboards are known to work with LinuxBIOS. (A…
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