Building a simple Beowulf cluster with ubuntu

Here I am sharing my experience of creating a simple Beowulf cluster with ubuntu.

I have used 3 ubuntu 12.04 systems for setting the cluster taking one as master node and two other as compute node.

 

You can find the detailed procedure for setting up the cluster here.

Major steps involved are as follows:

 Configuring the nodes

1. Add the nodes to the hosts file(see here)
2. Defining a user for running MPI jobs(see here)
3. Install and setup the Network File System(see here)
4. Setup passwordless SSH for communication between nodes(see here)
5. Setting up the process manager(see here)

Running  a job like MPICH2 example applications or Bioinformarics tool on cluster.

General Misconception:-

Most of the time people think that for setting up a cluster they should have same versions of ubuntu  on all nodes  but this is just a misconception.

As long as the flavour of Linux is same there is no problem in setting a cluster even if the nodes in cluster are having different versions of OS.

I hope it will be helpful.

Installing CentOS as Guest OS in VirtualBox

This blog I am writing as a part of  my experience during one of my Lab Assignments which was
"Installing CentOS as guest OS in VirtualBox in ubuntu"

The whole process of installation has two major phases which are-

1. Download and Install the VirtualBox

Download VirtualBox

First of all you need to download Oracle VirtualBox which can be downloaded from here .You need to download .exe for windows, .deb for ubuntu as per your parent OS.

Installing VirtualBox

After that you have to install the VirtualBox. After completing installation, launch virtual box and create new virtual machine.

1. Press “New“, Enter name of your choice for eg.“sachinCentOS ” . Set the type as “Linux“, Version as “Red Hat 64 bit“. And press “Next”. 
2. Allocate “Memory ” to 512 Mb or 1024 MB . You can increase this value as per your need. And Press”Next“. 
3. Then select “Create a virtual Hard drive Now” and press “Create“. 
4. Then choose “Dynamically allocated“. Note:- You can choose "Fixed size" also according to your requirement. 
5. Choose the amount of hard disk space you want to allocate for your CentOS system. Select at least 8 GB -10 GB . And press “Create“. 
6. You would see the Virtual Box Home Screen. Now Press on “Start“. 

2. Download CentOS ISO image and Installing CentOS

Download CentOS

You can download CentOS iso image from here.

Installing CentOS

After creating virtual machine following steps are to be taken

1. Select the created Virtual Machine and click on "Start" , click on the small folder icon and browse the of iso image file path and press "Start". 
2. Once you click on "Start" your virtual machine starts up for the first time. 
3. Choose language and press "Next". 
4. Select the model of the keyboard or just leave it to the default value. then press “Next“. 
5. Select basic storage devices as we fall under that category. then press “Next“. 
6. In the next screen it will ask to discard any data that exists in the hard disk that you created earlier for this VM. Go ahead and say yes to that. Note : This is not going to discard any of your main hard disk data. Only discard the VM HDD drive that you created along the way which should be empty any way. 
7. Name your new CentOS VM Server. Name to what ever you want this server to be called as, then press "Next". 
8. Choose the time zone for the Cent OS. then press “Next“. 
9. Enter a password for root user. If you are a newbie to Linux, root user is like administrator then press “Next“. 
10. Pick the default option "replace existing systems". This will clean wipe the VM HDD one more time and layout partitioning schema to install CentOS. then press “Next“. 
11. Go ahead and write changes to disk and Cent OS will start installing in your Virtual Machine. 
12. That's it! you have done with the installation.