[ML-General] Cluster Computing

Tue Feb 3 15:50:38 CST 2015

Hey Hunter,

Well, with the Edison, it wouldn't be 27 devices, it would be closer to 400
:)

I *think* I can fit 27 mini-itx motherboards in a 4U chassis (maybe only
21-24, depending on heatsink height). For the raspi's or the Edisons to be
viable they would need to beat that baseline on a flop/watt vs $$
comparison. Even in that case, the low RAM amount limits their usefulness.

On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 3:44 PM, Hunter Fuller <hfuller at pixilic.com> wrote:

> 27 devices in a metal box will work fine, provided there is also a fairly
> robust AP in that box. I would personally still lean toward USB Ethernet
> though. But that increases your devices size and complexity... Hm.
>
> As far as PXE boot, since there is no wired Ethernet available, I doubt
> that is a thing. However, you can Mount the internal storage as /boot, and
> have a script run that rsyncs the /boot fs between the boxes and a server.
> The rest can be achieved by using an NFS volume as your root partition.
> This setup is commonly done on armies of raspberry pis.
>
> There wouldn't be much difference between original prep on this and
> originally preparing several SD cards. In one case, you have to connect
> each device to a provisioning station. In the other case,you connect each
> SD card to the same station. Not much different, and once you boot one
> time, you can do the maintenance in an automated fashion across all nodes.
> On Jan 23, 2015 9:36 AM, "Michael Carroll" <carroll.michael at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Stephan,
>>
>> I didn't realize that the Edison was wifi-only.  I'm interested to hear
>> how 27 wifi devices in a metal box will work?
>>
>> Also, do you know if the edison can pxeboot?  I think that's the best
>> approach for booting a whole bunch of homogeneous computers, it would
>> certainly be more maintenance overhead without that capability.
>>
>> ~mc
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 11:04 PM, Stephan Henning <shenning at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> @Erik
>>> Well, the raspi and beaglebone have less ram than the Edison. I'll have
>>> to take a look at the Rock, the Pro version offers 2gb, but since the
>>> Edison is an x86 platform it is advantageous in many ways.
>>>
>>> @Tim
>>> Ya, that looks very similar. I'll give it a read through in the morning.
>>> I'll make sure to keep you updated.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:11 PM, Erik Arendall <earendall at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Not sure of your ram requirements, but there are options in the RasPI,
>>>> beaglebone black, and check out Radxa Rock.
>>>>
>>>> http://radxa.com/Rock
>>>>
>>>> Erik
>>>> On Jan 22, 2015 10:07 PM, "Tim H" <crashcartpro at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> This sounds like a fun project!
>>>>> Reminds me of this guy:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/349862/seamicro_cloud_server_sports_512_atom_processors/
>>>>> (cluster of low power processors in a single box)
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd also been kicking a similar idea around for the last year, but no
>>>>> real ability to do it, so I'd love to see your progress!
>>>>> -Tim
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:10 PM, Stephan Henning <shenning at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> In some ways, yes. The biggest limitation with the Edison for me is
>>>>>> the ram. While there is a lot that we could run on it, it's restricts them
>>>>>> enough that I don't think it would be as useful, which changes alters the
>>>>>> true 'cost' of the setup.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Granted, you could probably fit a few hundred of them in a 4U
>>>>>> chassis. It would be an interesting experiment in integration though since
>>>>>> they have no ethernet interface, only wireless.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 9:02 PM, Erik Arendall <earendall at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've often kicked the idea around doing this with Arduinos and
>>>>>>> FPGAs. I guess you could also do it with Intel Edison modules. Cost wise
>>>>>>> the Edison modules would better than a PC.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Erik
>>>>>>> On Jan 22, 2015 6:44 PM, "Stephan Henning" <shenning at gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> @mc
>>>>>>>> Both. If I start to scale this to a large number of nodes I can
>>>>>>>> foresee many headaches if I can't easily push modifications and updates.
>>>>>>>> From the job distribution side, it would be great to maintain compatibility
>>>>>>>> with condor, I'm just unsure how well it will operate if it has to hand
>>>>>>>> jobs off to the head node that then get distributed out further.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> @ Brian
>>>>>>>> Our current cluster is made up of discrete machines only about 20
>>>>>>>> nodes. Many of the nodes are actual user workstations that are brought in
>>>>>>>> when inactive. There is no uniform provisioning method. Every box has a
>>>>>>>> slightly different hardware configuration. Thankfully we do a pretty good
>>>>>>>> job keeping all required software aligned to the sam version.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The VM idea is interesting. I hadn't considered that. I will need
>>>>>>>> to think on that and how I might be able to implement it.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> @david
>>>>>>>> Yup, I'm fully aware this level of distributed computing is only
>>>>>>>> good for specific cases. I understand your position, thanks.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> -stephan
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> ---———---•---———---•---———---
>>>>>>>> Sent from a mobile device, please excuse the spelling and brevity.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Jan 22, 2015, at 5:54 PM, Brian Oborn <linuxpunk at gmail.com>
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I would be tempted to just copy what the in-house cluster uses for
>>>>>>>> provisioning. That will save you a lot of time and make it easier to
>>>>>>>> integrate with the larger cluster if you choose to do so. Although it can
>>>>>>>> be tempting to get hardware in your hands, I've done a lot of work with
>>>>>>>> building all of the fiddly Linux bits (DHCP+TFTP+root on NFS+NFS home) in
>>>>>>>> several VMs before moving to real hardware. You can set up a private
>>>>>>>> VM-only network between your head node and the slave nodes and work from
>>>>>>>> there.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 5:31 PM, Michael Carroll <
>>>>>>>> carroll.michael at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> So is your concern with provisioning and setup or with actual job
>>>>>>>>> distribution?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> ~mc mobile
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Jan 22, 2015, at 17:15, Stephan Henning <shenning at gmail.com>
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> This is a side project for the office. Sadly, most of this type of
>>>>>>>>> work can't be farmed out to external clusters, otherwise we would use it
>>>>>>>>> for that. We do currently utilize AWS for some of this type work, but only
>>>>>>>>> for internal R&D.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> This all started when the Intel Edison got released. Some of us
>>>>>>>>> were talking about it one day and realized that it *might* have *just
>>>>>>>>> enough* processing power and ram to handle some of our smaller
>>>>>>>>> problems. We've talked about it some more and the discussion has evolved to
>>>>>>>>> the point where I've been handed some hours and a small amount of funding
>>>>>>>>> to try and implement a 'cluster-in-a-box'.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The main idea being to rack a whole bunch of mini-itx boards on
>>>>>>>>> edge into a 4U chassis (yes, they will fit). Assuming a 2" board-board
>>>>>>>>> clearance across the width of the chassis and 1" spacing back-to-front down
>>>>>>>>> the depth of a box, I think I could fit 27 boards into a 36" deep chassis,
>>>>>>>>> with enough room for the power supplies and interconnects.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Utilizing embedded motherboards with Atom C2750 8-core CPU's and
>>>>>>>>> 16gb of ram per board, that should give me a pretty substantial cluster to
>>>>>>>>> play with.  Obviously I am starting small, probably with two or three
>>>>>>>>> boards running Q2900 4-core cpus until I can get the software side worked
>>>>>>>>> out.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> The software-infrastructure side is the part I'm having a hard
>>>>>>>>> time with. While there are options out there for how to do this, they are
>>>>>>>>> all relatively involved and there isn't an obvious 'best' choice to me
>>>>>>>>> right now. Currently our in-house HPC cluster utilizes HTCondor for it's
>>>>>>>>> backbone, so I would like to maintain some sort of connection to it.
>>>>>>>>> Otherwise, I'm seeing options in the Beowulf and Rocks areas that could be
>>>>>>>>> useful, I'm just not sure where to start in all honesty.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> At the end of the day this needs to be relatively easy for us to
>>>>>>>>> manage (time spent working on the cluster is time spent not billing the
>>>>>>>>> customer) while being easy enough to add notes to, assuming this is a
>>>>>>>>> success and I get the OK to expand it to a full 42U racks worth.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Our current cluster is almost always fully utilized. Currently
>>>>>>>>> we've got about a 2 month backlog of jobs on it.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 4:55 PM, Brian Oborn <linuxpunk at gmail.com>
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> If you can keep your utilization high, then your own hardware can
>>>>>>>>>> be much more cost effective. However, if you end up paying depreciation and
>>>>>>>>>> maintenance on a cluster that's doing nothing most of the time you'd be
>>>>>>>>>> better off in the cloud.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 4:50 PM, Michael Carroll <
>>>>>>>>>> carroll.michael at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Depending on what you are going to do, it seems like it would
>>>>>>>>>>> make more sense to use AWS or Digital Ocean these days, rather than
>>>>>>>>>>> standing up your own hardware. Maintaining your own hardware sucks.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> That being said, if you are doing something that requires
>>>>>>>>>>> InfiniBand, then hardware is your only choice :)
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> ~mc
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 4:43 PM, Joshua Pritt <
>>>>>>>>>>> ramgarden at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> My friends and I installed a Beowulf cluster on a closet full
>>>>>>>>>>>> of Pentium 75 Mhz machines we were donated just for fun many years ago back
>>>>>>>>>>>> when Beowulf was just getting popular.  We never figured out anything to do
>>>>>>>>>>>> with it though...
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 5:31 PM, Brian Oborn <
>>>>>>>>>>>> linuxpunk at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> In my previous job I set up several production Beowulf
>>>>>>>>>>>>> clusters, mainly for particle physics simulations and this has been an area
>>>>>>>>>>>>> of intense interest for me. I would be excited to help you out and I think
>>>>>>>>>>>>> I could provide some good assistance.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Brian Oborn (aka bobbytables)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 4:25 PM, Stephan Henning <
>>>>>>>>>>>>> shenning at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Does anyone on the mailing list have any experience with
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> setting up a cluster computation system? If so and you are willing to humor
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> my questions, I'd greatly appreciate a few minutes of your time.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> -stephan
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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