[ML-General] Cluster Computing

Fri Jan 23 09:28:55 CST 2015

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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