Cluster setup

[cavemanoc]

I have 4 old computers (Pentium 4) kicking around (plus a few bits that might make a couple more.) Rather than stripping and Fleabaying the lot I thought it might be fun to set up a cluster to mess around with.

So... this is the bit where I tell you that I know absolutely nothing about servers/clusters.

OS: What OS should I be looking at? Being that the closes thing I've seen to this is WHS What should I be looking at. I thought maybe a Trial version of Server 2003, or maybe a Linux Distro if you can recommend a simple one.

Hardware: What will I need network wise to link them all together?

Software: Once it's all up and running - what on earth should I do with it. I could obviously go for FoH or SETI, but was hoping to do something a little different - any ideas welcome!

I'd love to do something like the Render Farm in the pictures below - but the build log will probably be much delayed

 

[iaind]

Would it not be a better idea to devide what you want to do with them first?

 

[cavemanoc]

That's part of the problem - I've got no idea what I want to do with them - hence open to suggestions

 

[cavemanoc]

Maybe a slightly different tack - does anyone have a cluster at home - and if so, what do they use it for?

 

[neil_g]

i cant think of any reason why anyone would need one at home to be honest. generally they are for used high traffic throughput and/or redundancy.

 

[fizzy]

I used to have a cluster setup at home using old machines, to allow me to play around with 'em as I tend to encounter clustered environments a lot at work.

I used 3 machines - 1 I set up as a windows domain controller using windows 2000 server, the other two I installed windows 2000 advanced server (as that has microsoft clustering support) with both servers connected via scsi to a shared scsi disk (required for MS clustering).

They were all connected on a local network via an 8 port switch. Worked well.... its a high availability setup allowing resource failovers, such as file sharing, printing, sql/exchange etc. Allowed me to have a good fiddle without braking any live production environments.

......but then I ditched it all and created the same setup as virtual machines on the freely available VMware server software. All on one box, a lot less hastle, cabling, power etc.

If you had a cluster farm in mind (i.e. multi machine processing/number crunching) thats a bit different. Tend to find that numerous older/slower machines just don't work as well together as one newer machine or equal combined computing power.......

 

[cavemanoc]

Thanks for that - just the input I was after. The guys at work have been pushing to set up a small SQL server and it looked like I was going to get Joed to set it up - having a bit of practice in a safe environment would be hugely helpful. I may well go that route with a couple of trial copies of 2003 just to play/get my hand in.

I did think about using them as a Folding/Seti type rig, but as you pointed out (especially with the advent of CUDA) I could achieve far more with a single low end modern machine than my little cluster could ever hope to do

Hence the trawl for ideas really - there must be something fun/different/interesting I can do with them - rather than strip and 'bay the lot. Someone must have a good quality whacky idea? I mean... they put men on the moon with considerably less power than I have to play with - surely I can find something fun to do...

 

[Curiosityx]

Virtualization is the new clustering for most businesses, personally i would see if you can get ahold of VmWare V3I and try using tools such as VMotion and DRS to load balance virtual machines across each of the boxes.

 

[Generious]

Virtualization is the new clustering for most businesses, personally i would see if you can get ahold of VmWare V3I and try using tools such as VMotion and DRS to load balance virtual machines across each of the boxes.

If you are using a home system you will not be able to use Vmotion / Storage motion as you need some type of shared storage, secondly the cost and licenses.
Clustering under Vmware you need to work with raw device mappings drives instead of normal vmdk files and again vmotion does not work in conjunction with RDMs!
A RDM is presented to the ESX host and your VM is created using a normal vmdk disk however your storage IE quourum is shared / and say a S:\ is shared again RDMs.
Each virtual machine for best practices is sitting on a different host and the two cannot be on the same host.

We have around 25+ Virtual clusters at the moment and 80+ physical windows clusters.

Get yourself a copy of vmware workstation and create one w2k3EE machine.
clone it twice.

Use the original as your domain controller.(rename it )
Second as a cluster node (rename it )
Create the cluster
third as a cluster node (rename it)
Join it into the cluster.

If you need instructions on howto create a cluster under vmware workstation let me know, I have a cluster running at the moment mostly for training the new guys in work on the basics of clustering.
Very handy as I have it all running on my laptop great for demo's.

 

[fizzy]

If you are using a home system you will not be able to use Vmotion / Storage motion as you need some type of shared storage, secondly the cost and licenses.
Clustering under Vmware you need to work with raw device mappings drives instead of normal vmdk files and again vmotion does not work in conjunction with RDMs!
A RDM is presented to the ESX host and your VM is created using a normal vmdk disk however your storage IE quourum is shared / and say a S:\ is shared again RDMs.
Each virtual machine for best practices is sitting on a different host and the two cannot be on the same host.

We have around 25+ Virtual clusters at the moment and 80+ physical windows clusters.

Get yourself a copy of vmware workstation and create one w2k3EE machine.
clone it twice.

Use the original as your domain controller.(rename it )
Second as a cluster node (rename it )
Create the cluster
third as a cluster node (rename it)
Join it into the cluster.

If you need instructions on howto create a cluster under vmware workstation let me know, I have a cluster running at the moment mostly for training the new guys in work on the basics of clustering.
Very handy as I have it all running on my laptop great for demo's.

This is pretty much what I've setup too - a clustered environment on vmware server on my laptop.

I support ESX servers at work (commercial level vmware boxes with propriatory host "os") and its altogether another level to the free vmware server. Its a lot more complicated, expensive (needs to be licensed) and a lot pickier over what hardware it can run on - generally a set server level spec.

As its already been stated, vmotion, DRM's and the like require an enterprise class shared storage (such as a HP SAN or similar) to be able to work properly. Not really something you can setup at home unless you have lots of spare cash, room, a forgiving partner (these things tend to be LOUD - hence why they are normally stashed away in server rooms!)... or a very friendly workplace who don't mind you borrowing things for a while.

A colleaque in work is now a qualified VMware ESX expert, and even he's having problems sorting out some of the issues we've had on some of our esx systems.

 

[oddjob62]

As its already been stated, vmotion, DRM's and the like require an enterprise class shared storage (such as a HP SAN or similar) to be able to work properly. Not really something you can setup at home unless you have lots of spare cash

Spare box, Openfiler, instant iSCSI target. I used it for testing vmotion while we were waiting for delivery of our FC SAN.

 

[slylittlefox]

As its already been stated, vmotion, DRM's and the like require an enterprise class shared storage (such as a HP SAN or similar) to be able to work properly. Not really something you can setup at home unless you have lots of spare cash, room, a forgiving partner (these things tend to be LOUD - hence why they are normally stashed away in server rooms!)... or a very friendly workplace who don't mind you borrowing things for a while.

A colleaque in work is now a qualified VMware ESX expert, and even he's having problems sorting out some of the issues we've had on some of our esx systems.

Spare box, Openfiler, instant iSCSI target. I used it for testing vmotion while we were waiting for delivery of our FC SAN.

Exactly. A SAN can consist of OpenFiler/FreeNAS on an old system you've got with a few hard disks in it.

It does my head in that loads of people think you can't experiment with enterprise level software unless you have enterprise level hardware to play on. I would also argue the point with how ESX is more complicated than VMware Server 2? Care to explain? Sure, there are some differences. But they are by no means worlds apart.

You can emulate exactly the same situations/systems that big IT companies use at home, albeit on a smaller scale.

Stop trying to make enterprise level IT unreachable. You can download ESX as a trial, and furthermore download pretty much any enterprise level software on trial. Whatsmore you can (more often than not) run it on commodity hardware.

Damn you fat cats and your cigars.

 

[Generious]

Exactly. A SAN can consist of OpenFiler/FreeNAS on an old system you've got with a few hard disks in it.

It does my head in that loads of people think you can't experiment with enterprise level software unless you have enterprise level hardware to play on. I would also argue the point with how ESX is more complicated than VMware Server 2? Care to explain? Sure, there are some differences. But they are by no means worlds apart.

You can emulate exactly the same situations/systems that big IT companies use at home, albeit on a smaller scale.

Stop trying to make enterprise level IT unreachable. You can download ESX as a trial, and furthermore download pretty much any enterprise level software on trial. Whatsmore you can (more often than not) run it on commodity hardware.

Damn you fat cats and your cigars.

Reason you need a SAN is one performance
Two if you use site recovery manager you are using in our case EVA8100's controller based replication.
Otherwise you will need to look into something like HP's insight Dynamics VSE or a different solution.

Three reliability and growth and using a san based backup solution.

Difference between vmware server and ESX is that VMware ESX installs and runs on the bare metal of a physical server where as VMware Server needs a base operating system.
And it is hardware limited good luck installing it on a desktop or old server that isn't on the hardware compatibility list.

You will obtain must better performance from ESX Server as it has much less overhead. ESX Server also has many features available such as VMFS, VMotion, VMHA, and DRS. On the other hand, ESX Server is also a commercial product that must be purchased where as VMware Server is a free product.

Lack of the service console is also noticable which makes troubleshooting performance issue on VMs a real nightmare.
And believe me when you manage a enviroment with more than +700 Virtual server do not want to run and manage 90+ Vmware Server installation on a windows OS.
At least with ESX if something happens to the host IE panics just rebuild the box if you using blades you can use virtual connect disconnect the san from the blade reinstall the OS takes about 8mins and reconnect the virtual connect profile back to the blade again voila san presented again, without worrying about the san side/zoning ect.

However if you virtual server installation borks/ gets killed by another MS patch if you do not have a patch shedule you need to reinstall the OS again that takes without using altiris about 35/45mins then you Av software / management tools / OS patches / to install couple of reboots later reinstall virtual server again and reconfigure that again. restore anything else from backup.
It is not a solution for large enterprises its fine for home use ( install ESX within vmware workstation!! here you go http://vmblog.com/archive/2007/11/0...are-esx-server-inside-a-workstation-6-vm.aspx ) and small offices ect.

 

[Amoeba]

unintelligible crap

Wtf are you on about mate