Jul232012

How to set up a homemade computer cluster?

illegal3alien asks:

I’ve been looking into various software/operating systems to create homemade clusters, but am at a loss. I’d like to combine the power of a couple different computers and run one OS on top of them that is distributed. Ultimately, I would like to create Virtual Machines inside the OS that each have a specific task, and all the processing would be distributed throughout the computers.

I found MPICH2 (and setup a basic version on some virtual machines), but I want to run any program, not just those optimized for parallel processing.



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3 Answers -

0 votes

Kannon Y

July 24, 2012

This is easily the least qualified I’ve been in a subject area and yet attempted to answer it, regardless.

To my knowledge, the best Linux distribution for building a cluster is Beowulf Linux. There’s a substantial amount of literature on the internet dealing with creating such a thing, although I imagine it’s so ridiculously difficult and unstable that it doesn’t even approach feasibility. Parallel computing has always been regarded impractical for personal computing due to its complexity.

There’s a variety of how-to guides on setup.

Wouter Ruelens

I believe Ubuntu server has an option to setup a cluster on installation. As Ubuntu has a lot of documentation you might want to take a look there.

July 24, 2012
0 votes

George Monroe

July 24, 2012

depending on what your cluster will be doing i would check with the main applicance vendor. nevertheless the previous, i would tend to point you toward linux, as there are many free resources to tinker with

0 votes

Jayen Lapez

August 2, 2012

Yeah…hehe just use some RJ 45 and UTP Cable..hehe