Computersight -

Most people have never even heard of computer Clusters. A Beowulf Cluster is basically a group of computers wired together so that they can share processor power for high-end computing. You can even run a web server from a Cluster. There are few websites about Clustering and even fewer books, so learning this special skill can be very hard. Finding someone who has built a Beowulf Cluster is very rare, but the possibilities of a Cluster is endless.

    The most common use of a Beowulf Cluster is in science labs, schools and other educational buildings, analysis centers, and healthcare centers. It is also popular for use in web servers, programming, and storage data bases. This is beautiful technology and it is a shame that it now basically unheard of, even in most technology groups, this is still a geek secret.

    The software used to run Clusters is Linux. You can use Mac or Microsoft Windows but you can only use multi-thread applications with it. Meaning that the only software that will work is software that has been programmed to use up to more than one processor. Red Hat Linux is the most popular. But to save money, you could use Ubuntu Server Linux. Even Suse-Linux will work for Clustering.

    The most common question that is asked about Clustering is this; “Can you throw any old computers together for a Cluster?” and the answer is “YES” but other hardware is needed. And Clusters work better when their Nodes are clones of each other. Meaning that each computer is like the next. The term “Node” refers to the computers that are linked together through the Ethernet switch. The Main Node is the computer with the monitor, and it tells the other Nodes, the Slave Nodes what and when to process. All of this information can be found through online study, but it is not as easy to find like things like food recipes or book publishers.

    Right now I’m working on putting my own Beowulf Cluster together as a web server. Most likely I’m going to use Ubuntu Server.Thank you for reading.