ABC Gnu/Linux is a new
distro for setting up a HPC cluster that works in both live and
installed modes. Details and documentation are still sparse. I have
tried it in live mode on a virtual cluster, and it works nicely, in my
experience. It has the ganglia monitor, which is nice for seeing the
details of the operation of the cluser. The frontend node automatically
begins to operate as a dhcp server, using eth0, so be careful not to
interfere with existing networks if you boot it up. I recommend giving
it a try.
13 Nov 2009. version 1.9.3 is available here
(thanks LinuxTracker).
This fixes a security vulnerability, for more information, see http://wiki.debian.org/mmap_min_addr.
Also has some new examples. Probably has a major showstopper bug, this
is Friday the 13th, afterall.
I ran across Cluster by
Night which is another live CD approach to setting up a cluster for
MPI work. It works within an existing network, which is not the case
with PelicanHPC. It seems to be a very nice solution when it is not
possible to set up a private network.
The Linux Pro Magazine article on PelicanHPC from the June issue
is now
available online.
30 June 2009. I finally managed to make a decent screencast that
shows how to use PelicanHPC. It's 34MB, though. Check it here if you have the curiosity and bandwidth.
29 Sept 2008. If you were
looking for ParallelKnoppix and you arrived here, you're in the right
place. PelicanHPC is the continuation of the ParallelKnoppix project.
The PK web page is no longer available, and re-directs here. ISO images
for the last version of PK are achived here on the download page, but
you're encouraged to use PelicanHPC instead.
Features
PelicanHPC is a live CD image that let's you set up a high
performance computing cluster in a few minutes. A Pelican cluster
allows you to do parallel computing using MPI. You can run Pelican on
a single multiple core machine to use all cores to solve a problem,
or you can network multiple computers together to make a cluster. The
frontend node (either a real computer or a virtual machine) boots
from the CD image. The compute nodes boot by PXE, using the frontend
node as the server. All of the nodes of the cluster get their
filesystems from the same CD image, so it is guaranteed that all
nodes run the the same software. Packages can be added to the frontend
node on the fly, thanks to aufs.
If new software is installed in /home/user (easy for self-compiled, a
little tricky for .debs), it is available to
all the
nodes. The CD image is created by running a
single script, which takes advantage of the Debian
Live infrastructure. It is very easy
to create a custom version with new packages installed in standard
locations by adding package names to the script
and then running it.
Pelican is created using Debian Live. To make
your own version you only need live_helper
(also deboostrap, rsync, any others?) and the make_pelican script,
which is provided below.
The LAM-MPI and OpenMPI
implementations of MPI are installed. Both 32 and 64 bit versions are
available. Debian testing (Lenny) is the base for both.
You can use any Class C network you
like. By default, the cluster is on 10.11.12.*
xfce4 window manager, konqueror for
browsing and file management, ksysguard for monitoring the cluster,
kate and nano for editing. As noted, it is very easy to add packages.
Pelican is a bare-bones framework for setting up a HPC cluster.
Pelican releases and all testing is currently done using Debian
Lenny as the base. Squeeze or sid may or may not work.
Here are some shots of v1.9.3 (click to enlarge):
Download
I'd appreciate it if you would try to get a new release using
bittorrent, if possible. Check for torrents here.
When the torrent gets stale, use the normal
download page or a mirror (see below). The make_pelican script
and pre-built ISO images are always available on the normal
download page. To use the script to make your own version, you
need to install the live_helper
package. Get the most recent version.
The main documentation is the tutorial,
which is a series of screenshots with comments. For those of you who
fly by the seat of your pants, boot a computer using the CD, and follow
the instructions that come up on the screen.
Screencast video that shows how to
set up and use PelicanHPC. Warning - this is about 34MB.
Muhammad Sharif, and Aman Ullah Khan (2007) Benchmarking of PVM and
LAM/MPI Using OSCAR, Rocks and Knoppix Clustering Tools, PROCEEDINGS OF
WORLD ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY VOLUME 21 MAY 2007
ISSN 1307-6884
Pelican is close to perfection but it's not quite there.
Here are some problems I would like some help with:
infiniband support: I believe that a
user managed to use IB on ParallelKnoppix. If so, it should not be hard
to do on Pelican. I don't have hardware to try this.
documentation and examples of usage
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(c) 2007 Michael Creel
