Tutorial: Build The Ultimate PC

"The shopping list

"In theory, you can use any old PC. The minimum requirement is that it must be able to run Linux; so that narrows the choice down to almost any PC from the last 10 years. But in reality, the cluster works best if the machines that you're linking together are relatively close in specification, especially when you start to take running costs into consideration. A 1GHz Athlon machine, for example, could cost you over £50 a year in electricity costs. You'd be much better off spending this money on a processor upgrade for a more efficient machine. A similar platform for each computer also makes configuration considerably easier.

"For our cluster, we used four identical powerful machines. You only need powerful machines if you're making a living from something computer-based -- 3D animation, for instance -- where you can weigh the extra cost against increased performance. We're also going to assume that you have a main machine you can use as the master. This will be the eyes and ears of the cluster, and it's from here that you'll be able to set up jobs and control the other machines."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Fixing your network the lazy way using Nagios(Apr 07, 2009)
• How to check VMware Tools status per virtual Machine(Apr 06, 2009)
• Ubuntu server adoption slow but steady in the data center(Apr 02, 2009)
• SA's new supercomputer powered by open source(Mar 22, 2009)
• Shopping on Penguins(Mar 21, 2009)
• Use DRBD to Provide Rock-Solid MySQL Redundancy(Mar 16, 2009)
• Using iSCSI On Debian Lenny (Initiator And Target)(Mar 13, 2009)
• Seagate, AMD Double Down on SATA Speeds(Mar 10, 2009)
• Linux high-performance cluster monitoring with Ganglia(Mar 07, 2009)
• High-Availability Storage Cluster With GlusterFS On Ubuntu(Mar 06, 2009)
• Xen Cluster Management With Ganeti On Debian Lenny(Mar 06, 2009)
• The Personal Cluster: Coming To A Desk Near You(Feb 13, 2009)