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Beowulf cluster

T

The Borg

Senior member
Hi all,

Just has a thought after reading some stuff about beowulf clusters (and the fact I have a similar hardware setup - although running Windows).

Would it be possible at this moment in time to setup a beowulf cluster and then run BOINC on the cluster. ie one instance if you will of BOINC running on the whole cluster? Would it be fast, faster?

Any comments would be interesting.
 
Before I built the 3 FX-60 computers, I researched building a Beowulf computer. I was looking at Linux instead of windows and there are several packages available to help you out. Essentially, a Beowulf class computer is a group of computers linked by Ethernet to a cluster manager. The individual computers are set up to boot from the Ethernet connection and receive all programs and work from the cluster manager. You do need a small HD on each box for a swap file. You could also set up a flash drive for this.

To do this under Windows:

Set up the network so the cluster manager can access all the other computers.

Install the BOINC client on each computer so it launches at boot.

Install the BOINC server software on the cluster computer to serve up WUs for the project that the other computers are working.

Install a fake BOINC client on the cluster manager to communicate to the project representing the rest of the network. This fake manager will report all WUs that its network has reported and issue WUs back to those computers as it receives the data from the BOINC project.

One of the pitfalls of this approach is that the BOINC project may not recognize the platform (AMD with 117 cpus, anyone?)

Another complexity is that the fake client will have to pass the appropriate executable for each WU if they are different.

Good luck!🙂

PS: BOINC advocates the use of their server software for just such a setup. Not necessarily for crunching BOINC, but also to crunch business applications that require more power.
 
Fred,

Not quite what I had in mind. I ran my SETI classic setup like that. Using SETIGate on a 'server' machine, all the others (up to 17 at one time) communicated with that machine. It then did all the downloading ot WU and the uploading of the results. Then it was easy. BOINC is more complicated and needs to know what machine it is running on.

I was thinking more along the lines of the cluster appearing as one big powerful machine to the BOINC client, but with 117 AMD CPU's.

Can this be done? Will it be worth the effort?
 
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