Front cover Acrobat bookmark Draft Document for Review June 15, 2001 6:30 pm SG24-6041-00 Linux HPC Cluster Installation xCAT - xCluster Administration Tools Developed by Egan Ford IBM ^ xSeries Intel-based Linux® Installing Red Hat® with Kickstart and xCAT Luis Ferreira, Gregory Kettmann Andreas Thomasch, Eillen Silcocks Jacob Chen, Jean-Claude Daunois Jens Ihamo, Makoto Harada Steve Hill and Walter Bernocchi ibm.com/redbooks Draft Document for Review June 15, 2001 6:29 pm 6041edno.fm International Technical Support Organization Linux High Performance Cluster Installation May 2001 SG24-6041-00 6041edno.fm Draft Document for Review June 15, 2001 6:29 pm Take Note! Before using this information and the product it supports, be sure to read the general information in “Special notices” on page 239. First Edition (May 2001) This edition applies to Red Hat® Linux® Version 6.2 for Intel® Architecture. This document created or updated on June 15, 2001. Comments may be addressed to: IBM Corporation, International Technical Support Organization Dept. JN9B Building 003 Internal Zip 2834 11400 Burnet Road Austin, Texas 78758-3493 When you send information to IBM, you grant IBM a non-exclusive right to use or distribute the information in any way it believes appropriate without incurring any obligation to you. © Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 2001. All rights reserved. Note to U.S Government Users – Documentation related to restricted rights – Use, duplication or disclosure is subject to restrictions set forth in GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corp. Draft Document for Review June 15, 2001 6:29 pm 6041TOC.fm Contents Figures . .ix Tables . .xi Preface . xiii The team that wrote this redbook. xiii Acknowledgements . xvi Special notice . xviii IBM Trademarks. xviii Comments welcome. xviii Chapter 1. Introduction . 19 1.1 In the beginning . 20 1.2 Intended audience . 21 1.3 Open source . 21 1.4 Linux . 22 1.5 Linux clusters . 22 1.5.1 High Availability (HA) clusters . 23 1.5.2 High-Performance Computing. 26 Chapter 2. General cluster architecture . 29 2.1 Applications . 31 2.1.1 Parallelism. 31 2.1.2 Computer architecture. 32 2.1.3 Software application program interface (API) architecture . 33 2.1.4 Application architecture. 34 2.1.5 Creating the Application . 35 2.1.6 Bottlenecks . 35 2.2 Hardware Architecture . 38 2.2.1 Cluster components . 40 2.2.2 User. 40 2.2.3 Control. 41 2.2.4 Management . 41 2.2.5 Storage . 42 2.2.6 Installation . 43 2.2.7 Compute . 43 2.3 Network architecture . 44 2.3.1 How to design the cluster network . 46 2.3.2 Remote access/Equinox terminal server. 48 © Copyright IBM Corp. 2001 iii 6041TOC.fm Draft Document for Review June 15, 2001 6:29 pm 2.4 Software Architecture . 49 2.4.1 Operating system . 49 2.4.2 File System . 50 2.4.3 Inter process Communication (IPC) . 51 2.4.4 Resource management. 53 Chapter 3. Components Overview. 55 3.1 Hardware . 56 3.1.1 Head node. 56 3.1.2 Compute nodes. 57 3.1.3 Management . 57 3.1.4 Network . 59 3.2 Software. 62 3.2.1 Operating system . 62 3.2.2 System Management . 66 3.2.3 Development . 68 3.2.4 Resource management. 71 Chapter 4. Solution Guide . 75 4.1 General considerations . 76 4.2 Configuration aids . 78 4.2.1 Rack configurator . 78 4.2.2 PC configurator . 78 4.2.3 Other useful resource & tips . 79 4.3 Configuration schemes. 81 4.4 Cluster questionnaire . 84 4.5 Our cluster configuration . 87 Chapter 5. Hardware preparation. 91 5.1 Node hardware installation . 92 5.2 Populating the rack & cabling . 95 5.3 Cables in our cluster . 100 5.4 ASMA card setup . 102 Chapter 6. Management node installation . 105 6.1 Before you start . 106 6.2 Operating system installation . 106 6.2.1 Installing the Red Hat CD . 107 6.2.2 System configuration. 108 6.3 xCAT installation . 112 6.4 Additional software installation . 113 6.4.1 The Linux kernel . 113 6.4.2 h2n . 120 6.4.3 PXELinux . 120 iv Linux HPC Installation Draft Document for Review June 15, 2001 6:29 pm 6041TOC.fm 6.4.4 atftp . 120 6.4.5 Equinox setup . 121 6.4.6 Conserver . ..