[ML-General] Cluster Computing

Thu Jan 22 22:06:42 CST 2015

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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