[tacettin]

Hi everyone,

We have 3 HP Z840 workstation. The three is the same. So far we were using it separately. We want to use the three together and setup a cluster. We do not have much information on this. Is there anyone who can give detailed information or tell me where I can find it?

In addition, do we have to use windows server or linux server as an operating system? Can we use regular windows version or ubuntu etc. ?

Thank you very much in advance.

[naffrancois]

Hello,

What you need for a simple setup is a 1gb lan switch and a head node. I prefer head node to be a different computer but you can actually use one of the three nodes as a head and a node at the same time.

Then I think the simplest way is to use NFS, a shared disk partition which will be visible and synchronized by the three nodes and the head. MPI will need passwordless ssh.

The following guides helped me:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MpiClusterUbuntu
https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~mjf...f_cluster.html

You can do it with regular OS, I set everything up using Ubuntu desktop on the head and Ubuntu server on the nodes and it works perfectly.

[tacettin]

Originally Posted by naffrancois

Hello,

What you need for a simple setup is a 1gb lan switch and a head node. I prefer head node to be a different computer but you can actually use one of the three nodes as a head and a node at the same time.

Then I think the simplest way is to use NFS, a shared disk partition which will be visible and synchronized by the three nodes and the head. MPI will need passwordless ssh.

The following guides helped me:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MpiClusterUbuntu
https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~mjf...f_cluster.html

You can do it with regular OS, I set everything up using Ubuntu desktop on the head and Ubuntu server on the nodes and it works perfectly.

Thank you for your interest,

Did you connect the cluster to the internet? Some says it is not safe.

In addition, do I have to make any adjustments in any CFD software?

Lastly, new workstations will come soon. Could there be a single head of two different clusters? If it can be, I can separate a non-powerful computer for this job.

Thank you again.

[naffrancois]

Connecting the cluster to internet is your decision. During setup will make things faster for sure. As for your software, considering they use mpi protocol it should not be very difficult to make them work with your cluster.


I do not see any difficulties in using the same head for two different clusters, but I never had to do that... Considering it is your first setup, I would start easy and make the first cluster work