Beowulf Cluster

2014
Amandeep Singh
Computer Science Department
Final Year
BEOWULF CLUSTER : Enabling
High Performance Computing

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Version 1.0 Copyright 2013, 2014 Amandeep Singh
All about high performance Beowulf Clusters
This document describes about the Linux High Performance
Computing (HPC) clusters a.k.a Beowulf clusters and their implemen-
tation.

BEOWULF CLUSTER : Enabling High Performance
Computing

The article outlines the process required to install and configure Linux
for use in a cluster environment. While no prior knowledge of either
Linux or clusters is assumed, the reader should be forewarned that
this is not a trivial task. Note that the document is written in refer-
ence to ubuntu linux operating system

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Table of Contents

BEOWULF CLUSTER : Enabling High Performance
Computing .................................................................. 1
Table of Contents ........................................................ 2
Abstract ...................................................................... 7
High-Performance Computing .................................... 8
Optimizing performance ............................................. 8
Introduction to cluster systems .................................. 9
What is a Beowulf ? .................................................. 10
History of the Beowulf .............................................. 12
Uses of a Beowulf ..................................................... 15
Cluster types and their applications ......................... 16
High Availability (HA) clusters ................................. 16
Web clusters and Web farms ................................. 17
Load balancing cluster ............................................ 17
Web server cluster.................................................. 18
Application server cluster ....................................... 18
Database server cluster .......................................... 18
Server consolidation cluster ................................... 19
Clusters in the real world .......................................... 19

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Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network
Computing (BOINC) ................................................ 19
SETI@home ............................................................ 20
Clusters in the ideal world ........................................ 20
Getting started with a Linux cluster .......................... 20
The GNU/Linux story ................................................ 21
Why Linux ?............................................................... 23
Main hardware components of a cluster ................. 23
Head/Master Node ................................................. 23
Slave Computers ..................................................... 24
Switch/Router ......................................................... 24
Switch vs Hub ............................................................ 24
Myrinet ..................................................................... 25
Network Topology .................................................... 25
Some commonly used Network Topologies in a
Beowulf Cluster......................................................... 26
IP addressing and TCP/IP Protocol ............................ 27
Interconnecting the Nodes ....................................... 25
Software specifications ............................................. 29
Integrated cluster scripts and packages ................... 34
PGI CDKCluster Development Kit........................ 34

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Rocks Cluster Distribution ...................................... 36
Oscar(Open Source Cluster Application Resources) 36
YACI (Yet Another Cluster Installer) ........................ 37
ScyldOS ................................................................... 37
Essential software packages ..................................... 30
Operating system ................................................... 30
Message passing interface ..................................... 30
Resource managers ................................................ 31
Necessary libraries .................................................. 31
Batch schedulers ..................................................... 31
Compilers ................................................................ 31
Monitoring .............................................................. 31
File system .............................................................. 32
Security ................................................................... 32
Process Manager .................................................... 33
Network File System (NFS) ..................................... 34
Network Time Protocol (NTP) Time Sync ............. 34
Message passing libraries - Detailed......................... 37
Network setup options ............................................. 28
Testing and verification ............................................ 39
The future: Using the cluster .................................... 40

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Final thoughts ........................................................... 40
Step by step procedure for setting up a Beowulf cluster
.................................................................................... 42
Detailed procedure to implement beowulf cluster : 42
STEP 1: Set up Hardware ....................................... 42
STEP 2: Install linux ................................................. 42
STEP 3: Connect and Configure Network on all nodes
................................................................................ 42
STEP 4: Configuring the Hostname ......................... 43
STEP 5: Create new users on each node ................. 44
STEP 6: Configure the slave nodes.......................... 45
STEP 7: Configure the SSH client/server ................. 45
STEP 8: Setting up passwordless SSH for
communication between nodes ............................. 45
STEP 9: Configure the NFS client/server ................. 46
STEP 10: Configure the master node ...................... 47
STEP 11: Sharing Master Folder .............................. 47
STEP 12: Mounting /master in nodes ..................... 48
STEP 13: Install compilers and other development
tools (if not installed earlier) .................................. 48
STEP 14: Install Message Passing Interface Library
(Open MPI or MPICH) ............................................. 48

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STEP 15: Setting up a machine file ......................... 49
STEP 16: Testing ...................................................... 50
STEP 17: Configuring NIS Network Information
Services (NIS) .......................................................... 51
Tuning a Cluster .......................................................... 52
Maintaining a Cluster .................................................. 52
MPI programming on clusters ..................................... 53
Works Cited ................................................................. 59

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Abstract

Real time data processing requires high computation capabilities.
There is a trade-off between High Performance and the Cost of com-
putation. In traditional computers we can achieve high performance
using multiprocessors and more RAM etc. In cluster computing we
can achieve the same performance in less cost using a cluster of gen-
eral purpose computers. Basic idea in Cluster computing is that, we
will have a cluster of general purpose computers which will be pro-
cessing data or executing some functionality. In parallel processing,
problem decomposition is achieved in two ways:
Domain decomposition (data are divided into pieces of approximate-
ly the same size and then mapped to different processors) or
Functional decomposition (We can also divide whole computation
into smaller modules and assign each module to an individual pro-
cessor of a group of processors in a cluster).
Thus we are achieving high performance in less cost.

As a programmer, one may find that he/she needs to solve even
larger, more memory intensive problems, or simply solve problems
with greater speed than is possible on a serial computer. We can
turn to parallel programming and parallel computers to satisfy these
needs. Using parallel programming methods on parallel computers
gives us access to greater memory and Central Processing Unit (CPU)
resources which are not available on serial computers. Hence, we are
able to solve large problems that may not have been possible other-
wise, as well as solve problems more quickly. One of the basic meth-
ods of programming for parallel computing is the use of message
passing libraries. These libraries manage transfer of data between in-
stances of a parallel program running (usually) on multiple proces-
sors in a parallel computing architecture.

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High-Performance Computing

High-Performance Computing (HPC) is a branch of computer science
that focus on developing supercomputers, parallel processing algo-
rithms, and related software. HPC is important because of its lower
cost and because it is implemented in sectors where distributed par-
allel computing is needed to:

Solve large scientific problems
Advanced product design
Environmental studies (weather prediction and geological studies)
Research

Store and process large amounts of data
Data mining
Genomics research
Internet engine search
Image processing

Optimizing performance

The speed or performance of a computer system can be increased by
increasing the bus width or the clock speed of the processor. Howev-
er, there are limits to the performance benefits that can be achieved
by simply increasing the clock speed or bus width. So there's an al-
ternative approach to increasing computing power. Instead of using
one computer to solve a problem, why not use many computers, in
concert, to solve the same problem? This is achieved through the
HPC Linux clusters.

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Introduction to cluster systems

What is a Cluster ?
A cluster is a group of computers which work together toward a final
goal. Some would argue that a cluster must at least consist of a mes-
sage passing interface and a job scheduler. The message passing in-
terface works to transmit data among the computers (commonly
called nodes or hosts) in the cluster. The job scheduler is just what it
sounds like, It simply takes job requests from user input or other
means and schedules them to be run on the number of nodes re-
quired in the cluster. It is possible to have a cluster without either of
these components, however. Consider a cluster built for a single
purpose. There would be no need for a job scheduler and data could
be shared among the hosts with simple methods like a CORBA inter-
face.
By definition, however, a cluster must consist of at least two nodes, a
master and a slave. The master node is the computer that users are
most likely to interact with since it usually has the job scheduler run-
ning on it. The master can also participate in computation like the
slave nodes do, but it is not required or even recommended in large
clusters. The slave nodes are just that. They respond to the requests
of the master node and, in general, do most of the computing.

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What is a Beowulf ?

The beowulf cluster article on Wikipedia describes the Beowulf cluster
as follows:
A Beowulf cluster is a group of what are normally identical, com-
mercially available computers, which are running a Free and Open
Source Software (FOSS), Unix-like operating system, such as BSD,
GNU/Linux, or Solaris. They are networked into a small TCP/IP LAN,
and have libraries and programs installed which allow processing to
be shared among them. Wikipedia, Beowulf cluster, 28 February
2011.

Beowulf is mainly based on commodity hardware, software, and
standards. It is one of the architectures used when intensive compu-
ting applications are essential for a successful result. It is a union of
several components that, if tuned and selected appropriately, can
speed up the execution of a well written application. So it is a multi-
computer architecture which can be used for parallel computations.
It is a system which usually consists of one server node, and one or
more client nodes connected together via Ethernet or some other
network. It is a system built using commodity hardware components,
like any PC capable of running Linux, standard Ethernet adapters,
and switches. It does not contain any custom hardware components
and is trivially reproducible. Beowulf also uses commodity software
like the Linux operating system, Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) and
Message Passing Interface (MPI). The server node controls the whole
cluster and serves files to the client nodes. It is also the cluster's con-
sole and gateway to the outside world. Large Beowulf machines
might have more than one server node, and possibly other nodes
dedicated to particular tasks, for example consoles or monitoring
stations. In most cases client nodes in a Beowulf system are dumb,
the dumber the better. Client Nodes are configured and controlled
by the server node, and do only what they are told to do.

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In a disk-less client configuration, client nodes don't even know their
IP address or name until the server tells them what it is. One of the
main differences between Beowulf and a Cluster of Workstations
(COW) is the fact that Beowulf behaves more like a single machine
rather than many workstations. In most cases client nodes do not
have keyboards or monitors, and are accessed only via remote login
or possibly serial terminal. Beowulf nodes can be thought of as a CPU
+ memory package which can be plugged in to the cluster, just like a
CPU or memory module can be plugged into a motherboard.
Beowulf is not a special software package, new network topology or
the latest kernel hack. Beowulf is a technology of clustering Linux
computers to form a parallel, virtual supercomputer. Although there
are many software packages such as kernel modifications, PVM and
MPI libraries, and configuration tools which make the Beowulf archi-
tecture faster, easier to configure, and much more usable, one can
build a Beowulf class machine using standard Linux distribution
without any additional software. If you have two networked Linux
computers which share at least the /home file system via NFS, and
trust each other to execute remote shells (rsh), then it could be ar-
gued that you have a simple, two node Beowulf machine. Beowulf
programs are usually written using languages such as C and
FORTRAN, and use message passing to achieve parallel computation.
A Beowulf cluster can be as simple as two networked computers,
each running Linux and sharing a file system via NFS and trusting
each other to use the rsh command (remote shell). Or it can be as
complicated as a 1024 nodes with a high-speed, low-latency network
consisting of management and master nodes, and so on.

2 classes of Beowulf Clusters:
CLASS I: Built entirely using commodity hardware and software. The
advantages are price, and the use of standard technology (SCSI,
Ethernet,
IDE).

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CLASS II: Not necessarily built using commodity hardware and soft-
ware
alone. The performance is better than CLASS I.

The true Beowulf is a cluster of computers interconnected with a
network with the following characteristics:
1. The nodes are dedicated to the beowulf cluster.
2. The network on which the nodes reside are dedicated to the
beowulf cluster.
3. The nodes are Mass Market Commercial-Off-The-Shelf
(M2COTS) computers.
4. The network is also a COTS entity.
5. The nodes all run open source software.
6. The resulting cluster is used for High Performance Computing
(HPC).

History of the Beowulf

The first Beowulf was developed in 1994 at the Center of Excellence
in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS), a contractor to
NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. It
was originally designed by Don Becker and Thomas Sterling and con-
sisted of 16 Intel DX4 processors connected by 10MBit/sec ethernet.
Beowulf was built by and for researchers with parallel programming
experience. Many of these researchers have spent years fighting with
MPP vendors, and system administrators over detailed performance
information and struggling with underdeveloped tools and new pro-
gramming models. This lead to a "do-it-yourself" attitude. Another
reality they faced was that access to a large machine often meant ac-
cess to a tiny fraction of the resources of the machine shared among

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many users. For these users, building a cluster that they can com-
pletely control and fully utilize results in a more effective, higher per-
formance, computing platform. The realization is that learning to
build and run a Beowulf cluster is an investment; learning the peculi-
arities of a specific vendor only enslaves you to that vendor. These
hard core parallel programmers are first and foremost interested in
high performance computing applied to difficult problems. At Super-
computing '96 both NASA and DOE demonstrated clusters costing
less than $50,000 that achieved greater than a gigaflop/s sustained
performance. A year later, NASA researchers at Goddard Space Flight
Center combined two clusters for a total of 199, P6 processors and
ran a PVM version of a PPM (Piece-wise Parabolic Method) code at a
sustain rate of 10.1 Gflop/s. In the same week (in fact, on the floor of
Supercomputing '97) Caltech's 140 node cluster ran an N-body prob-
lem at a rate of 10.9 Gflop/s. This does not mean that Beowulf clus-
ters are supercomputers, it just means one can build a Beowulf that
is big enough to attract the interest of supercomputer users. Beyond
the seasoned parallel programmer, Beowulf clusters have been built
and used by programmer with little or no parallel programming ex-
perience. In fact, Beowulf clusters provide universities, often with
limited resources, an excellent platform to teach parallel program-
ming courses and provide cost effective computing to their computa-
tional scientists as well. The startup cost in a university situation is
minimal for the usual reasons: most students interested in such a
project are likely to be running Linux on their own computers, setting
up a lab and learning of write parallel programs is part of the learn
experience. In the taxomony of parallel computers, Beowulf clusters
fall somewhere between MPP (Massively Parallel Processors, like the
nCube, CM5, Convex SPP, Cray T3D, Cray T3E, etc.) and NOWs (Net-
works of Workstations). The Beowulf project benefits from develop-
ments in both these classes of architecture. MPPs are typically larger
and have a lower latency interconnect network than an Beowulf clus-
ter. Programmers are still required to worry about locality, load bal-
ancing, granularity, and communication overheads in order to obtain
the best performance. Even on shared memory machines, many pro-

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grammers develop their programs in a message passing style. Pro-
grams that do not require fine-grain computation and communica-
tion can usually be ported and run effectively on Beowulf clusters.
Programming a NOW is usually an attempt to harvest unused cycles
on an already installed base of workstations in a lab or on a campus.
Programming in this environment requires algorithms that are ex-
tremely tolerant of load balancing problems and large communica-
tion latency. Any program that runs on a NOW will run at least as
well on a cluster. A Beowulf class cluster computer is distinguished
from a Network of Workstations by several subtle but significant
characteristics. First, the nodes in the cluster are dedicated to the
cluster. This helps ease load balancing problems, because the per-
formance of individual nodes are not subject to external factors. Also,
since the interconnection network is isolated from the external net-
work, the network load is determined only by the application being
run on the cluster. This eases the problems associated with unpre-
dictable latency in NOWs. All the nodes in the cluster are within the
administrative jurisdiction of the cluster. For examples, the intercon-
nection network for the cluster is not visible from the outside world
so the only authentication needed between processors is for system
integrity. On a NOW, one must be concerned about network security.
Another example is the Beowulf software that provides a global pro-
cess ID. This enables a mechanism for a process on one node to send
signals to a process on another node of the system, all within the us-
er domain. This is not allowed on a NOW. Finally, operating system
parameters can be tuned to improve performance. For example, a
workstation should be tuned to provide the best interactive feel (in-
stantaneous responses, short buffers, etc), but in cluster the nodes
can be tuned to provide better throughput for coarser-grain jobs be-
cause they are not interacting directly with users. The Beowulf Pro-
ject grew from the first Beowulf machine and likewise the Beowulf
community has grown from the NASA project. Like the Linux com-
munity, the Beowulf community is a loosely organized confederation
of researcher and developer. Each organization has its own agenda
and its own set of reason for developing a particular component or

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aspect of the Beowulf system. As a result, Beowulf class cluster com-
puters range from several node clusters to several hundred node
clusters. Some systems have been built by computational scientists
and are used in an operational setting, others have been built as
test-beds for system research and others are serve as an inexpensive
platform to learn about parallel programming. Most people in the
Beowulf community are independent, do-it-yourself'ers. Since eve-
ryone is doing their own thing, the notion of having a central control
within the Beowulf community just doesn't make sense. The com-
munity is held together by the willingness of its members to share
ideas and discuss successes and failures in their development efforts.
The mechanisms that facilitate this interaction are the Beowulf mail-
ing lists, individual web pages and the occasional meeting or work-
shop. The future of the Beowulf project will be determined collec-
tively by the individual organizations contributing to the Beowulf
project and by the future of mass-market COTS. As microprocessor
technology continues to evolve and higher speed networks become
cost effective and as more application developers move to parallel
platforms, the Beowulf project will evolve to fill its niche.

Uses of a Beowulf

Scientific computing
Making movies
Commercial servers (web/database etc)

A Beowulf can be used to perform complex and heavy calculations.
we can use the cluster on cluster specific versions
of bioinformatics tools that perform some sort of heavy calculations

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Cluster types and their applications

All clusters basically fall into two broad categories: High Availability
(HA) and High-Performance Computing (HPC). HA clusters strive to
provide extremely reliable services. HPC is a cluster configuration de-
signed to provide greater computational power than one computer
alone could provide.

Some other cluster types:

1. High-Availability Clusters
2. Load-Balancing Clusters
3. High-Performance Clusters
4. Cloud Computing Clusters

Advantages of clustering:

High performance
Large capacity
High availability
Incremental growth

Applications of Clustering:

Scientific computing
Making movies and video processing
Commercial servers (web/database/etc)

High Availability (HA) clusters

HA clusters can be categorized based on function. For example, we
would organize a database cluster or a server consolidation cluster
under the heading of an HA cluster, since their paramount design

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consideration is usually high availability. Web clusters, while certainly
an HA type of cluster, are often categorized by themselves.
In a typical HA cluster, there are two or more fairly robust machines
which mirror each others functions. Two schemes are typically used
to achieve this.
- In the first scheme, one machine is quietly watching the other ma-
chine and waiting to take over in case of a failure.
- The other scheme allows both machines to be active. In this envi-
ronment, care should be taken to keep the load below 50 percent on
each box or else there could be capacity issues if a node were to fail.

These two nodes typically have a shared disk drive array comprised
of either a small computer system interface (SCSI) or a Fibre Channel;
both nodes talk to the same disk array. Or, instead of having both
nodes talking to the same array, you can have two separate arrays
that constantly replicate each other to provide for fault tolerance.
Within this subsystem, it is necessary to guarantee data integrity
with file and/or record locking. There must also be a management
system in place allowing each system to monitor and control the
other in order to detect an error. If there is a problem, one system
must be able to incapacitate the other machine, thus preserving data
integrity.

Web clusters and Web farms

Web clusters generally bring elements from many other computing
platforms or other clusters and are often a hybrid of various technol-
ogies. A typical Web cluster is more a collection of machines creating
an infrastructure than an actual cluster. We will explore a typical
Web cluster by starting at the top, where it interfaces with the Inter-
net, and finish at the bottom, where the data content is kept.

Load balancing cluster

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In the first layer the hardware is connected through internet. Note
that there are multiple redundant connections. These will tie in to a
method of load balancing, either through dedicated hardware or
through various software products, such as Linux Virtual Server (LVS).

Web server cluster
The next layer is where the Web servers reside. This is simply a group
of machines running a Web server application, such as Apache.
These servers can present static pages (sometimes called brochure-
ware) or they can have the core infrastructure of more complex pag-
es with dynamic content. If a server fails, it will be noted by the load
balancers, and future requests will be sent to other servers. If the
load increases dramatically, additional servers can be easily added.

Application server cluster
The application layer is where server side code is kept and run. Serv-
er side JavaTM is kept and run at this layer. This will generally be a
type of high availability solution. At this level, it is still fairly easy to
add additional machines to increase capacity.

Database server cluster
Finally comes the database layer. This layer usually requires some
form of HA solution. It is not uncommon, in a very large operation,
for this to be a mainframe database. It is not difficult, using the pro-
cedures outlined above, to create a robust, high availability database
for the backend using Linux and various choices for databases, such
as IBM's DB2 or the open source MySQL. It is fairly difficult to in-
crease capacity at this level without some thought and planning in
the beginning. Also note that, in the Web server space, that various
layers can be combined in one machine or one pair of machines. This
is largely a consideration of the expected number of hits and how
much hardware can be justified.

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Server consolidation cluster
It is not uncommon in todays IT shops to have more and more file
servers as departmental servers get added. At some point, there can
be a pronounced cost and support advantage to consolidating these
servers into a single large machine. If much of your data is stored
here, it makes sense that some form of high availability solution be
developed. There are also several methods of attaching network
storage with multiple servers capable of sharing the data. Regardless
of the architecture, the goal is to take many existing servers and
combine them into a single solution that never fails.

Clusters in the real world

There exist numerous examples of computer clusters in the practical
world. Real World computer clusters generally use commodity hard-
ware to power their nodes. Some of the real world clusters are dis-
cussed here:

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)

It is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid com-
puting. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home pro-
ject before it became useful as a platform for other distributed appli-
cations in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biol-
ogy, climatology, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it
possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power
of personal computers around the world.
BOINC has been developed by a team based at the Space Sciences
Laboratory (SSL) at the University of California, Berkeley led by David
Anderson, who also leads SETI@home. As a high performance dis-

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tributed computing platform, BOINC has about 540,130 active com-
puters (hosts) worldwide processing on average 6.642 petaFLOPS.
The framework is supported by various operating systems, including
Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and various Unix-like systems includ-
ing GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. BOINC is free software which is released
under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

SETI@home

("SETI at home") is an Internet-based public volunteer computing
project employing the BOINC software platform, hosted by the Space
Sciences Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley, in the
United States. SETI is an acronym for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial
Intelligence. Its purpose is to analyse radio signals, searching for
signs of extra terrestrial intelligence, and is one of many activities
undertaken as part of SETI.
SETI@home was released to the public on May 17, 1999, making it
the second large-scale use of distributed computing over the Inter-
net for research purposes, as Distributed.net was launched in 1997.
Along with MilkyWay@home and Einstein@home, it is the third ma-
jor computing project of this type that has the investigation of phe-
nomena in interstellar space as its primary purpose.

Clusters in the ideal world

To maximize the benefits of a cluster, the right hardware must be
used. It is generally accepted that for optimal performance, all nodes
except the master node must have identical hardware specifications.
This is due to the fact that one node which takes longer to do its
work can slow the entire cluster down as the rest of the nodes must
stop what they are doing and wait for the slow node to catch up. This

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is not always the case, but it is a consideration that must be made.
Having identical hardware specs also simplifies the setup process a
great deal as it will allow each hard drive to be imaged from a master
instead of configuring each node individually.

Getting started with a Linux cluster

Although clustering can be performed on various operating systems
like Windows, Macintosh, Solaris etc. , Linux has its own advantages
which are as follows:-
Linux runs on a wide range of hardware
Linux is exceptionally stable
Linux source code is freely distributed.
Linux is relatively virus free.
Having a wide variety of tools and applications for free.
Good environment for developing cluster infrastructure.

In the following paragraphs, some more detailed reasons are provid-
ed for using Linux as the cluster operating system.

The GNU/Linux story

In 1984 Richard Stallman, then working for MIT, became distressed
with the way the software industry was evolving. Equipment and
software were once shipped with its source code. Now, software is
usually sent in binary and proprietary formats. Stallman felt that this
closed source software defeated many of the mechanisms which he

22
felt were important to software's continued growth. This concept
was documented, much later, in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, by Er-
ic Raymond.
Later that same year, Stallman quit MIT so he could pursue the de-
velopment of software. He began developing new, free software. He
called this the GNU project (pronounced new). GNU is a recursive
acronym for GNUs Not UNIX. To protect this free software,
Copyleft and the GNU GPL (GNU General Public License) were writ-
ten. In addition, the OSFTM or Free Software Foundation was creat-
ed to promote this software and philosophy.

Stallman began by creating a compiler (called the GNU C compiler or
gcc) and a text editor (GNU Emacs) as a basis for further develop-
ment. This has evolved, over time, to be a very complete suite of ap-
plications and infrastructure code that supports today's computing
environment.
Stallman's project was still moving along nearly a decade later, yet
the
kernelthe core code running the computerwas not ready.
Then, in 1991, a Finnish student by the name of Linus Torvalds de-
cided to write his own operating system. It was based on the con-
cepts of UNIX, but was entirely open source code. Torvalds wrote
some of the core code. Then he did something quite original: he
posted his code in a newsgroup on the growing Internet. His devel-
opment efforts were complimented by others around the world and
the Linux kernel was born.
There's a documentary hollywood movie also, describing the whole
story about how the GNU/Linux evolved :
Today's Linux distributions combine the Linux kernel with the GNU
software to create a complete and robust working environment. In
addition, many companies, such as Red Hat, SuSE or TurboLinux,
add their own installation scripts and special features and sell this as
a distribution.

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Why Linux ?

Linux provides the features typically found in standard UNIX such as
multi-user access, pre-emptive multi-tasking, demand-paged virtual
memory and SMP support. In addition to the Linux kernel, a large
amount of application and system software and tools are also freely
available. This makes Linux the preferred operating system for clus-
ters.

The decisions in building a beowulf cluster will have to be made in
roughly the four following categories:

1. Operating System
2. Network Topology
3. Communication
4. Software

Main hardware components of a cluster rig

It is necessary to have at least two machines when building a cluster.
It is not necessary that these machines have the same levels of per-
formance. The only requirement is that they both share the same ar-
chitecture. A switch is more desirable than a hub when designing
clusters due the increased speed that they offer.

Head/Master Node

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There are four main considerations when building the master node.
They are: processor speed, disk speed, network speed, and RAM.
The head node sends the computing tasks to the compute nodes,
which in turn must send the result back, as well as sending messages
to each other. The faster the better. The head node can also act as a
NFS, PXE, DHCP, TFTP, and NTP server over the Ethernet network.

Slave Computers

The slave nodes need to accomplish two tasks: perform the compu-
tations assigned to them and then send that data back out over the
network. For this reason, their disk performance is not critical. In fact,
it is common to have nodes without hard drives in a cluster. The
three most important hardware considerations for slave nodes are
processor speed, network speed and RAM.

Switch/Router

A switch/hub or another connecting device is also required to con-
nect the slave nodes with each other and with the master node.
Ethernet cable is also required to provide the communication medi-
um.

Switch vs Hub

A switch is more desirable than a hub when designing clusters, due
to the increased speed that they offer.

25
Myrinet

Myrinet is used by the IBM Linux Cluster Solution. A high-speed
switch fabric is used to provide low-latency, high-bandwidth, inter-
process communications from node to node. Myrinet is configured
to provide full bisectional bandwidth which gives full bandwidth ca-
pability from any node to any node at any time and can be scaled to
thousands of nodes simply by adding additional switches.

Interconnecting the Nodes

When considering how to connect a clusters nodes together, there
are two decisions to be made:
a. What kind of network you will use; and
b. Your networks topology.

The goal is to purchase the fastest network you can afford. Most Be-
owulf clusters use a switched ethernet fabric, though a few use ATM
or Myrinet networks. Fast ethernet (100Base-T) is most common, as
Gigabit ethernet (1000Base-T) is just becoming affordable. In many
parallel computations, network latency is the primary bottleneck in
the system, so a fast network is desirable.

Network Topology

Choosing a topology depends on:
i. the kinds of computations your cluster will be running,

26
ii. the kind of network in your cluster, and
iii. how much money you have to spend.

A clusters bandwidth-needs depend on its computations. The vast
majority of Beowulf clusters use a star topology. However, since
network latency is often the bottleneck in a computation, some clus-
ters augment this star with a ring, producing a star-ring hybrid. In
theory, the additional bandwidth of these extra links allows each
node to communicate with two others directly, reducing traffic
through the switch, reducing latency. Some clusters add even more
bandwidth by augmenting the ring with a hypercube. Other, more
elaborate topologies also exist, especially for clusters of more than
48 nodes. The issue is complicated by manufacturers, who claim that
their smart switches allow n/2 of a clusters n nodes to communi-
cate with the other n/2 simultaneously. If this is true, it is unclear
whether the extra connectivity of a ring or hypercube is worth the
expense.

Some ranges of possibilities.
Shared multi-drop passive cable, or
Tree structure of hubs and switches, or
Custom complicated switching technology, or
One big switch

Some commonly used Network Topologies in a
Beowulf Cluster

Direct wire. Two machines can be connected directly by a
Ethernet cable (usually a Cat 5e cable) without needing a hub or a
switch. With multiple NICs per machine, we can create networks but
then we need to specify routing tables to allow packets to get
through. The machines will end up doing double-duty as routers.

27

Hubs and Repeaters. All nodes are visible from all nodes and
the CSMA/CD protocol is still used. A hub/repeater receives signals,
cleans and amplifies, redistributes to all nodes.

Switches. Accepts packets, interprets destination address
fields and send packets down only the segment that has the destina-
tion node. Allows half the machines to communicate directly with
the other half (subject to bandwidth constraints of the switch hard-
ware). Multiple switches can be connected in a tree or sometimes
other schemes. The root switch can become a bottleneck. The root
switch can be a higher bandwidth switch.

Switches can be managed or unmanaged. Managed switches are
more expensive but they also allow many useful configurations.

IP addressing and TCP/IP Protocol

The most prevalent protocol in networks is the Internet Protocol (IP).
There are two higher level protocols that run on top of the IP proto-
col. These are TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDP (User
Datagram Protocol).
IPv4 protocol has 32-bit addresses while the IPv6 protocol has 128-
bit addresses.
IP address range is divided into networks along an address bit
boundary. The portion of the address that remains fixed within a
network is called the network address and the remainder is the host
address. Three IP
These addresses are permanently unassigned, not forwarded ranges
are reserved for private networks.
10.0.0.0 10.255.255.255

28
172.16.0.0 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 192.168.255.255

by Internet backbone routers and thus do not conflict with publicly
addressable IP addresses. These make a good choice for a Beowulf
cluster. We will often use 192.168.0.0 192.168.0.255 in our exam-
ples.
The address with all 0s in the host address, that is, 192.168.0.0, is
the network address and cannot be assigned to any machine.
The address with all 1s in the host address, that is, 192.168.0.255 is
the network broadcast address.

Network address

Broadcast address

Other Network setup options

There are three possibilities.
Stand alone cluster
A cluster with all private IP addresses. Requires no Internet connec-
tion but has very limited access.
Universally accessible cluster
All machines have public IP addresses and can thus be accessed from
anywhere. This can be a high maintenance security nightmare! It can
also be hard and expensive to get so many public IP addresses.
Guarded cluster
There are two scenarios here.
One machine has two NICs: one with a public IP address and
the other with a private IP address. All other machines have on-
ly private IP addresses. Thus only one machine is vulnerable. IP

29
Masquerading can be used to give the private nodes access to
the Internet, if needed. This is the most common Beowulf con-
figuration.
The cluster machines still have public addresses but firewall
software limits access to all but one machine from a limited set
of outside machines. One machine is still publicly accessible.
This is more flexible but requires a careful firewall setup. This
would be the case when a system administrator wants to con-
figure already existing machines into a cluster.

When assigning addresses and hostnames, it helps to keep them
simple and uniform. For example: ws01, ws02, ws03, ..., ws08. Or
ws001, ws002, ..., ws255. Labelling each machine with its host name,
IP address and MAC address can be handy. It is also possible to use
dynamically assigned addresses and names for each node, using one
machine as the DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server.

Software specifications

For effective use of a Beowulf cluster as a shared, production tool,
the following software list could be considered essential.
1. automated cluster installation
2. remote hardware management (remote power on/off, moni
toring CPU temperature etc.)
3. cluster management (monitoring, system administration etc.)
4. job scheduling
5. libraries/languages for parallel programming
6. tuning and analysis utilities
7. integrated distributions

Some more commonly used softwares and tools:

30
MPI, for communication between processes
NFS, to have a network disk visible and shared to all nodes
NTP, to synchronize the time of the nodes so that you can
compare log events and timestamps
bootp to boot the nodes from a remote node, so that each
node restart fresh with a guaranteed good and uniform setup.
a set of cluster utilities to make your life easier, such as a dis-
tributed ssh to execute the same command on all nodes at the
same time.
a task scheduler, or queue manager, such as Condor, LFS or
others, that allow you to prioritize job submissions and eventu-
ally measure them for limiting/pricing.
a watchdog, so to reboot one node automatically if it gets stuck.
software control for UPS (so to shut down automatically in case
of prolonged loss of power)

Essential software packages (Detailed)

Operating system
Linux is the de facto OS for HPC clusters.

The latest version of the motherboard BIOS and firmware, which
should be the same on all nodes.

Message passing interface
message passing interface, necessary for the individual processes on
the separate compute nodes to share the same data. OpenMPI is a
no-brainer. Open MPI is one of the leading MPI-2 implementations.
LAM/PVM is a popular choice. MPICH is a free version of MPI . LAM-

31
MPI acts as a communication layer among the nodes.

Resource managers

Necessary libraries
MPI, LAM, PVM

Batch schedulers
A Batch Scheduler allows you to schedule jobs, manage users, set
priorities, memory access, node access, duration of job execution
and much more. With your Batch Scheduler you can ensure that you
are obtaining the most productivity out of your Cluster possible. Ex-
amples : torque and moab

Compilers
Compilers transform source code from the source computer lan-
guage to the target computer language. Compilers create executable
which can be run on your HPC Cluster. Very often, performance var-
ies depending on the compiler used to create the executable

Monitoring
Each HPC Cluster needs an easy to use monitoring tool allowing you
to view all important operating conditions through a web based
Graphical User Interface (GUI). Through your web browser, you can
remotely access details regarding cpu usage, cpu temperatures,
chassis and cpu fan speeds, hard drive temperatures, memory utiliza-
tion, hard drive swap space and many more metrics. You can even
specify different time periods to gauge each metrics over those spec-
ified times. Computing overhead for cluster monitoring is extremely
low due to the carefully engineered data structures.

32
One of the most important items to monitor is the computing envi-
ronment. Maintaining a good computing environment is key to the
success and longevity of your cluster

File system
All computer systems have file systems and those file systems play
an important role in data storage, access and reliability. Your HPC
Cluster is no different. A clister includes a variety of file systems
available depending upon your storage needs, data access and over-
all performance.

Ext4 - The ext4 file system is a journaling file system that is 100%
backwards compatible with all of the utilities created for creating,
managing, and fine-tuning the ext2 & ext3 file system. The ext4 file
system can support volumes with sizes up to one exibibyte.

Network File System (NFS) - Distributed file system that allows
NFS servers to give access to their local file system to NFS clients
over a network using TCP/IP.

Security
Hackers are everywhere! And they want nothing more than to hijack
your computing resource. Port mapper and ipchains / iptables
should be configured to help keep your HPC Cluster secure. In addi-
tion, access should be restricted only to verified users via a series of
password protected files. Cron scripts must be included to keep user
accounts and configuration files synchronized.

portable bash management system, such as the Torque Resource
Manager, which allows you to break-up and distribute tasks to mul-
tiple machines. Pair Torque with the Maui Cluster Scheduler to com-
plete the setup.

33

multi-threading math libraries and compilers to build your parallel
computing programs

While there are a number of packages to choose from the Linux
software, the only ones you are required to install to set up the basic
cluster are NFS (network file system) and SSH (secure shell). Specifi-
cally, NFS makes it easier to share files between systems, affecting
setup of the super computer. SSH is a secure, safe way to remotely
connect from one computer to another, critical in the case of setting
up a 10-computer super computer cluster.

Process Manager
The process manager is needed to spawn and manage parallel jobs
on the cluster.
The MPICH wiki explains this nicely: Process managers are basically
external (typically distributed) agents that spawn and manage paral-
lel jobs. These process managers communicate with MPICH process-
es using a predefined interface called as PMI (process management
interface). Since the interface is (informally) standardized within
MPICH and its derivatives, you can use any process manager from
MPICH or its derivatives with any MPI application built with MPICH
or any of its derivatives, as long as they follow the same wire proto-
col. Frequently Asked Questions - Mpich.
The process manager is included with the MPICH package.
MPD has been the traditional default process manager for MPICH till
the 1.2.x release series. Starting the 1.3.x series, Hydra is the default
process manager. So depending on the version of MPICH you are us-
ing, you should either use MPD or Hydra for process management.
You can check the MPICH version by running mpich2version in the
terminal.

34

Network File System (NFS)

A distributed file system that enables users to access files and direc-
tories located on remote computers and treat those files and direc-
tories as if they were local. NFS is independent of machine types, op-
erating systems, and network architectures through the use of re-
mote procedure calls (RPC).

Network Time Protocol (NTP) Time Sync

The network time system is an accepted standard for synchronizing
time on a system with a remote time server. On a cluster we would
synchronize master with the time server.

Integrated cluster scripts and packages

These automated scripts and pre-build packages make the cluster in-
stallation very easy on user's part. Many single click installation
scripts are also available to put the user at ease.

PGI CDKCluster Development Kit

The PGI CDK Cluster Development Kit compilers and development
tools enable the use of networked clusters of AMD or Intel x64 pro-
cessor-based workstations and servers to tackle the largest scientific
computing applications. For Linux, the PGI CDK includes pre-
configured versions of MPI for Ethernet and Infini-Band. On Windows

35
HPC Server 2008, the PGI CDK integrates with MSMPI and the job
scheduler to enable development, debugging and tuning of high-
performance MPI or hybrid MPI/OpenMP applications written in
Fortran, C or C++.
PGI compilers offer world-class performance and features including
auto-parallelization for multicore, OpenMP directive-based parallel-
ization, and support for the PGI Unified Binary technology. The PGI
Unified Binary streamlines cross-platform support by combining into
a single executable file code optimized for multiple x64 processors.
This assures your applications will run correctly and with optimal per-
formance regardless of the type of x64 processor on which they are
deployed.

PGI CDK Cluster Development Kit Key Features
Floating multi-user seats for the PGI paral-
lel PGFORTRAN, PGCC and PGC++ compilers. World-class
single core and multicore processor performance
Full native support for OpenMPI directive- and pragma-based
SMP or multicore parallelization
in PGFORTRAN, PGCC and PGC++
Auto-parallelization for the latest AMD and Intel multicore pro-
cessors
Graphical parallel PGDBG debugger and PGPROF performance
profiler for auto-parallel, thread-parallel, OpenMP and MPI
programs
Pre-configured MPI message-passing libraries and utilities for
Linux
Optimized BLAS and LAPACK math libraries for Linux
Comprehensive support for all major Linux distributions and
Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008
Installation utilities to simplify the setup and management of
your Linux cluster
PGI Roll option - The PGI Roll is maintained and distributed by
Stanford University. The PGI Roll contains software only. A valid
PGI license is required to use the software. A validPGI

36
CDK license is required to enable remote MPI debugging and
profiling.

Rocks Cluster Distribution

The Rocks clustering package from the University of California at San
Diego makes it easy to build and maintain a high-performance com-
pute cluster with off-the-shelf hardware. Rocks is termed a cluster
provisioning, management and maintenance package. It helps you
set up the cluster in the first place (from bare metal); it provides the
tools to run parallel programs, and it provides the tools to maintain
and extend the cluster after it is created.
The package is delivered as a series of .iso images that you burn onto
a series of CDs or DVDs. You then boot the machine that will become
the head node from the appropriate DVD or CD, and the installation
routine guides you from there. After asking a minimum number of
questions in an interactive phase, the installation program builds the
head node. Upon reboot, you invoke a single routine (insert-ethers)
to add the rest of the machines as compute nodes. To add a compute
node, you simply network boot it, and it will be added to the cluster,
loaded and configured automatically. After the last node is complete,
you have a functional cluster, ready to execute parallel applications.

Oscar(Open Source Cluster Application Resources)

OSCAR (Open Source Cluster Application Resource) software package
is a high performance cluster (HPC) used to simplify the complex
tasks required to install a cluster. Its advantage is that several HPC-
related packages like MPI implementations, LAM, PVM (Parallel Vir-
tual Machine), PBS (Portable Batch Server) etc are installed by de-
fault and need not be installed separately.

37

YACI (Yet Another Cluster Installer)

ScyldOS

Some of NASAs original Beowulf researchers have started selling
ScyldOS , the Scyld Beowulf Cluster Operating System. ScyldOS is
Redhat Linux preconfigured for a cluster, including a custom version
of MPI. ScyldOS is commercial, open-source software (i.e., the source
code is free, but you must pay for the documentation). The ScyldOS
customizations presupposes that every cluster will have
i. a single master (i.e., no two-user mode), and
ii. use a star topology. RHL does not have such presuppositions.

More about Message passing libraries

Message passing libraries provide a high-level means of passing data
between process executing on distributed memory systems. These
libraries are currently at the heart of what makes it possible to
achieve high performance out of collections of individual cluster
nodes. Message passing libraries typically provide routines to initial-
ise and configure the messaging environments as well as send-
ing/receiving packets of data.
The two most popular high-level message-passing systems for scien-
tific and engineering applications are MPI (Message Passing Interface)
defined by the MPI Forum and the PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine)
from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee
at Knoxville, USA.

38

MPI I is the de facto standard for parallel programming, both on clus-
ters, and on traditional parallel supercomputers, such as the Cray
T3E and IBM SP2. MPI consists of a rich set of library functions to do
both point-to-point and collective communication among parallel
tasks. The first version of MPI did not specify the mean of spawning a
MPI task on a run-time environment. Generally, however, conven-
tions have been adopted by most MPI implementations. There are
several implementations of MPI which are available from different
sources. Most high-performance hardware vendors support MPI.
This provides users with a portable programming model and means
their programs can be executed on almost all of the existing plat-
forms without the need to rewrite the program from scratch.
There are two popular and free implementations of MPI, MPICH and
LAM. Each of these is a complete version of MPI I.
1. Argonne National Laboratory and Mississippi State University
developed the MPI reference implementation, MPICH. It has been
ported to most versions of UNIX.
2. LAM (Local Area Multicomputer) is an MPI programming envi-
ronment and development system developed by Notre Dame Uni-
versity. LAM includes a visualization tool that allows a user to exam-
ine the state of the machine allocated to their job as well as provides
means of studying message flows between nodes.

MPICH2 implementation relies solely on SSH and does not require a
daemon running on each machine in the cluster, it is presumably eas-
ier to setup in an environment that involves a large number of nodes.
But for my particular setup, either implementation should serve the
purpose.

PVM is a software system that allows users to set up a controlling
workstation that spawns child processes onto other machines. What
makes PVM unique as a parallel programming environment is that it
allows for the creation of an encapsulated virtual environment for
running parallel programs. The virtual machine provided by PVM al-

39
lows parallel programs can be run on heterogeneous collections of
computers.
With PVM, each user may construct their parallel environment con-
trolled from a single host on which child processes can be launched
onto other machines. PVM is implemented via a daemon that is in-
stalled on each machine. Any user who has enough resources to
compile and install the PVM package on a number of machines can
therefore, run it. The PVM library has functions to support and aid
the integration of parallel processing tools into the PVM environ-
ment. There are tools produced by researcher and vendors for PVM
environments. The MPI infrastructure supports parallel tools and
utilities by providing standard semantics for communications, con-
texts, and topologies.

Testing and verification

The last thing you may want to do before releasing all this compute
power to your users is test its performance. The HPL (High Perfor-
mance Lynpack) benchmark is a popular choice for measuring the
computational speed of the cluster. You will need to compile it from
source with all possible optimizations your compiler offers for the ar-
chitecture you chose. Compare your results on TOP500.org to com-
pare your cluster to the fastest 500 supercomputers in the world !
Reboot all the machines and see if each one comes on. See if you can
connect to each node from the master. If the hardware appears to
be running as designed, invoke your MPI application, whether LAM
or another messaging passing interface software.

40
The future: Using the cluster

The cluster can be used for research on object-oriented parallel lan-
guages, recursive matrix algorithms, network protocol optimization,
and graphical rendering. Several non-CS faculty can also plan to use
the cluster for computational modelling, including a physicist model-
ling electron behaviour in high-energy laser fields, a chemist model-
ling complex inorganic molecules, and an astronomer modelling the
interaction of Saturns Rings and troposphere. Computer science
students will receive extensive experience using the cluster in High
Performance Computing project, seniors can use it for their senior
projects.

Final thoughts

Building our cluster required a great deal of time. Roughly 10 differ-
ent individuals students, faculty, and administrators have con-
tributed to the construction of our cluster. The project of building a
supercomputer has captured the imagination of our campus, and has
provided an enjoyable focus this past year. As hardware continues to
evolve, cluster technology is increasingly affordable. We hope that
this report and the documentation available at kodevelop.com will
encourage other institutions to build their own clusters.

41

42
Step by step procedure for setting up a
Beowulf cluster

Brief steps to implement Beowulf :
Collect and connect all the hardware components like master
node, slave nodes, ethernet cable and switch
Install Linux on all the pc's
configure hostnames of all the nodes
setup ssh server and client package on all pc's
install MPI and other software packages using ssh
install test package and run

Detailed procedure to implement beowulf clus-
ter :

STEP 1: Set up Hardware
To set up a cluster, you must assemble and connect the nodes to
certain cluster hardware and configure the nodes into the cluster
environment

STEP 2: Install linux
Before installing Linux, it is a good idea to gather as much infor-
mation as possible about the PC's on which Linux will be installed,
like the monitor, video card, LAN card, RAM, processor speed,
hard disk. Next install Linux. Linux will need to be installed on eve-
ry node of the cluster.

STEP 3: Connect and Configure Network on all nodes
If you have just two computers, then both machines must be able
to reach each other over the network. We can connect them using

43
an ethernet wire. The easiest is to put both machines in the same
network with regard to hardware and software configuration, for
example connect both machines via a single hub or switch and
configure the network interfaces to use a common network such
as 192.168.0.x/24. Make sure that IP addresses are assigned to
them. If you dont have a router to assign IP, you can statically as-
sign them IP addresses. Configuring network involves assigning IP
Address, subnet mask and gateway for each node on cluster. It is
compulsory to assign static IP address rather than DHCP for clus-
ter private network. To make it simple, we will assign the IP ad-
dress 192.168.0.1 to the master machine and192.168.0.2 to
the slave machine.
Update /etc/hosts on both machines with the following lines: #
/etc/hosts (for master AND slave) 192.168.0.1 master 192.168.0.2
slave

STEP 4: Configuring the Hostname
To configure hostname (Machine Name) in Linux edit the hosts
configuration file in each node. Open the /etc/hosts file of each
machine and add the ip address and hostname of every machine.
Also take out the line which associates 127.0.0.1 with the ma-
chines hostname. Leave the one which says 127.0.0.1 localhost.
This ensures that the loopback address only refers to the local
machine. Ex:127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.105 master_node
192.168.1.103 slave node
or node0 10.1.1.1
node1 10.1.1.2

There may be other lines in this file, but these must be there for
the cluster to function. Also modify the /etc/hosts.allow file and
add the line ALL : ALL Suppose their are nodes running Ubuntu
with these host names: ub0, ub1, ub2, ub3; Defining hostnames in
etc/hosts/
Edit /etc/hosts like these:

44
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.133.100 ub0
192.168.133.101 ub1
192.168.133.102 ub2
192.168.133.103 ub3
Note that the file shouldn't be like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 ub0
192.168.133.100 ub0
192.168.133.101 ub1
192.168.133.102 ub2
192.168.133.103 ub3
or like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 ub0
192.168.133.101 ub1
192.168.133.102 ub2
192.168.133.103 ub3

otherwise other hosts will try to connect to localhost when they
try to reach ub0.

STEP 5: Create new users on each node

Create a new user in both the nodes. Let us call this new user as
mpiuser. You can create a new user through GUI by going
to System->Administration->Users and Groups and click "Add Us-
er". Create a new user called mpiuser and give it a password. Give
administrative privileges to that user. Make sure that you create
the same user on all nodes. Although same password on all the
nodes is not necessary, it is recommended that you do so because
it'll eliminate the need to remember passwords for every node.
We define a user with same name and same userid in all nodes
with a home directory in /mirror. Here we name it "mpiu"! Also

45
we change the owner of /mirror to mpiu: omid@ub0:~$ sudo
chown mpiu /mirror

STEP 6: Configure the slave nodes

Now download and install ssh-server in every node. Then logout
from your session and log in as mpiuser. To configure the ma-
chines that will act as slave nodes:

Install package nfs-common
Install package openssh-server

If these were already installed, Ubuntu will simply tell you they
are already the newest version. Running the install commands just
to be sure doesn't hurt anything. Once nfs and the ssh server are
installed, configuration of the slave nodes can proceed.

STEP 7: Configure the SSH client/server

Now set up a public key for passwordless ssh logins. The reason
for passwordless ssh is to be able to use all the nodes without hav-
ing to login to each one every time you run MPICH2. The running
of the cluster should be automatic across all nodes. Run this
command in all nodes in order to install OpenSSH Server : sudo
apt-get install openssh-server

STEP 8: Setting up passwordless SSH for communication between
nodes
First we login with our new user to the master node:
omid@ub0:~$ su - mpiu
Then we generate an RSA key pair for mpiu:
mpiu@ub0:~$ ssh-keygen -t rsa

46
You can keep the default ~/.ssh/id_rsa location. It is suggested to
enter a strong passphrase for security reasons.
Next, we add this key to authorized keys:
mpiu@ub0:~$ cd .ssh
mpiu@ub0:~/.ssh$ cat id_pub.dsa >> authorized_keys
As the home directory of mpiu in all nodes is the same
(/mirror/mpiu) , there is no need to run these commands on all
nodes. If you didn't mirror the home directory, though, you can
use ssh-copy-id <hostname> to copy a public key to another ma-
chine's authorized_keys file safely.
To test SSH run:
mpiu@ub0:~$ ssh ub1 hostname
If you are asked to enter a passphrase every time, you need to set
up a keychain. This is done easily by installing... Keychain.
mpiu@ub0:~$ sudo apt-get install keychain
And to tell it where your keys are and to start an ssh-agent auto-
matically edit your ~/.bashrc file to contain the following lines
(where id_rsa is the name of your private key file):
if type keychain >/dev/null 2>/dev/null; then
keychain --nogui -q id_rsa
[ -f ~/.keychain/${HOSTNAME}-sh ] && .
~/.keychain/${HOSTNAME}-sh
[ -f ~/.keychain/${HOSTNAME}-sh-gpg ] && .
~/.keychain/${HOSTNAME}-sh-gpg
Exit and login once again or do a source ~/.bashrc for the changes
to take effect.
Now your hostname via ssh command should return the other
node's hostname without asking for a password or a passphrase.
Check that this works for all the slave nodes.

STEP 9: Configure the NFS client/server

NFS allows us to create a folder on the master node and have it
synced on all the other nodes. This folder can be used to store
programs. To Install NFS just run this in the master node's termi-

47
nal: sudo apt-get install nfs-server . To install the client program
on other nodes run this command on each of them: sudo apt-get
install nfs-client if you want to be more efficient in controlling
several nodes using same commands, ClusterSSH is a nice tool. Set
up an nfs mount in the /etc/fstab file. Use the home directory of
the default user on the main node as an nfs share, which is one
reason why user accounts need to be identical across all machines.
This way, every machine has the exact same home directory.
Change to the /etc directory and modify the fstab file. You want to
append a line like this to the end of the file for the nfs directory to
be mounted:
master_node:/home/mpi /home/mpi nfs user,exec

That sets up the slave nodes to receive the directory exported by
the master node. Now change back to the home directory.

STEP 10: Configure the master node

Install the NFS server on the master node and configure the ex-
port:
Install package nfs-kernel-server

add this line to the /etc/exports file:
/home/mpi *(rw,insecure,sync)

sudo exportfs -r to export the directory to all slave nodes

STEP 11: Sharing Master Folder

Make a folder in all nodes with sudo mkdir /mirror, we'll store our
data and programs in this folder. And then we share the contents
of this folder located on the master node to all the other nodes. In
order to do this we first edit the /etc/exports file on the master
node to contain the additional line /mirror *(rw,sync) This can

48
be done using a text editor such as vim or by issuing this com-
mand: echo "/mirror *(rw,sync)" | sudo tee -a /etc/exports Now
restart the nfs service on the master node to parse this configura-
tion once again: sudo service nfs-kernel-server restart Note that
we store out data and programs only in master node and other
nodes will access them with NFS.

STEP 12: Mounting /master in nodes

Now all we need to do is to mount the folder on the other nodes.
This can be done manually each time like this:
omid@ub1:~$ sudo mount ub0:/mirror /mirror

But it's better to change fstab in order to mount it on every boot.
We do this by editing /etc/fstab and adding this line:
ub0:/mirror /mirror nfs
and remounting all partitions by issuing this on all the slave nodes:
omid@ub1:~$ sudo mount -a omid@ub2:~$ sudo mount -a
omid@ub3:~$ sudo mount -a

STEP 13: Install compilers and other development tools (if not in-
stalled earlier)
To be able to compile all the code on our master node (it's suffi-
cient to do it only there if we do it inside the /mirror folder and all
the libraries are in place on other machines) we need a compiler.
Get gcc and other necessary stuff by installing the build-essential
package:
mpiu@ub0:~$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

STEP 14: Install Message Passing Interface Library (Open MPI or
MPICH)

49
Make sure you install the package build-essential on the main
node, otherwise you will have no build tools or compilers.
Download MPICH2
The last steps to setting everything up are to put the mpich2 fold-
er on the path so that it can be found by the system. export
PATH=/home/mpi/mpich2/bin:$PATH
export PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/mpi/mpich2/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

sudo echo /home/mpi/mpich2/bin >> /etc/environment

Everything should now be installed and ready to go. To test this,
use the following commands:
which mpirun
which mpiexec
Very last thing to do is set up a hosts file for the cluster in the user
directory. The file should be named hosts and should be set up as
follows - One line for each machine in the network listed by host-
name
Ex:
master_node
slave_node

Installing MPICH2
Now the last ingredient we need installed on all the machines is
the MPI implementation. You can install MPICH2 using Synaptic by
typing:
sudo apt-get install mpich2
To test that the program did indeed install successfully enter this
on all the machines:
mpiu@ub0:~$ which mpiexec
mpiu@ub0:~$ which mpirun

STEP 15: Setting up a machine file

50
Create a file called "machinefile" in mpiu's home directory with
node names followed by a colon and a number of processes to
spawn:
ub3:4 # this will spawn 4 processes on ub3
ub2:2 # this will spawn 2 processes on ub2
ub1 # this will spawn 1 process on ub1
ub0 # this will spawn 1 process on ub0

STEP 16: Testing
Change directory to your mirror folder and write this MPI hel-
loworld program in a file mpi_hello.c (courtesy of this blog):

#include <stdio.h>
#include <mpi.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
int myrank, nprocs;

MPI_Init(&argc, &argv);
MPI_Comm_size(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &nprocs);
MPI_Comm_rank(MPI_COMM_WORLD, &myrank);

printf("Hello from processor %d of %d\n", myrank, nprocs);

MPI_Finalize();
return 0;
}

Compile it:
mpiu@ub0:~$ mpicc mpi_hello.c -o mpi_hello
and run it (the parameter next to -n specifies the number of pro-
cesses to spawn and distribute among nodes):
mpiu@ub0:~$ mpiexec -n 8 -f machinefile ./mpi_hello
You should now see output similar to this:

51
Hello from processor 0 of 8

STEP 17: Configuring NIS Network Information Services (NIS)
NIS enables you to create user accounts that can be shared across
all systems on your network. The user account is created only on
the NIS server. NIS clients download the necessary username and
password data from the NIS server to verify each user login. Con-
figuring NIS is necessary in order to perform computation on clus-
ter nodes by passing messages to each other, this requires a glob-
al shared space and password less logins. All this can be achieved
by configuring NIS. Head node will be the NIS master and all other
nodes (Compute nodes) will be NIS clients. An advantage of NIS is
that users need to change their passwords on the NIS server only,
instead of every system on the network. This makes NIS popular in
computer training labs, distributed software development pro-
jects or any other situation where groups of people have to share
many different computers. The disadvantages are that NIS doesn't
encrypt the username and password information sent to the cli-
ents with each login and that all users have access to the encrypt-
ed passwords stored on the NIS server.

Congratulations! You have a working Beowulf cluster platform.
Enjoy supercomputing

52

Proposed topics:

Tuning a Cluster

Maintaining a Cluster

53
MPI programming on clusters

Message Passing Interface It is an industry-wide standard protocol
for passing messages between parallel processors. MPI is a specifica-
tion for the developers and users of message passing libraries. By it-
self, it is NOT a library - but rather the specification of what such a li-
brary should be. MPI is the most widely used message passing library
in parallel processing and super computing tasks. MPI is mainly used
for developing parallel processing algorithms and software-programs
that can be divided into little pieces so that each piece can be exe-
cuted simultaneously by separate processors.
MPI is both small and at the same time large.
Small: Require only six library functions to write any parallel code
Large: There are more than 200 functions in MPI-2

MPI Programming Model: Originally MPI was designed for distribut-
ed memory architectures, which were becoming increasingly popular
at that time. As architecture trends changed, shared memory SMPs
were combined over networks creating hybrid distributed memory /
shared memory systems. MPI implementors adapted their libraries
to handle both types of underlying memory architectures seamlessly.
It means you can use MPI even on your laptops.

Why MPI ?
Today, MPI runs on virtually any hardware platform:
Distributed Memory
Shared Memory

A hybrid MPI program is basically a C/C++, fortran or Python program
that uses the MPI library.

HPC through an example :
To simulate a bio-molecule of 10000 atoms
Non-bond energy term ~ 10^8 operations

54
For 1 microsecond simulation ~ 10^9 steps ~ 10^17 operations
On a 1 GFLOPS machine (10^9 operations per second) it takes 10^8
secs (About 3 years 2 months)
Need to do large no of simulations for even larger molecules
PARAM Yuva 5 x 10^14 3 min 20 sec
Titan 5.7 seconds

Amdahls Law Code = Serial Part + Part which can be parallelized. The
potential program speedup is defined by the fraction of code that
can be parallelized.
Amdahls Law - Can you get a speed up of 5 times using quad core
processor ?

HPC architecture typically consists of massive number of computing
nodes (typically 1000s) highly interconnected by specialized low la-
tency network fabric which uses MPI for data exchange.
Nodes = cores + memory Computation is divided into tasks distrib-
uting these tasks across the nodes and they need to synchronize and
exchange information several times a second.
Communication Overheads: Latency in Startup time for each mes-
sage transaction 1 s
Bandwidth: The rate at which the messages are transmitted across
the nodes /processors 10 Gbits /sec. You cant go faster than these
limits

MPI Communicator: a set of processes that have a valid rank of
source or destination fields. The predefined communicator is
MPI_COMM_WORLD, and we will be using this communicator all the
time. MPI_COMM_WORLD is a default communicator consisting of
all processes. Furthermore, a programmer can also define a new
communicator, which has a smaller number of processes than
MPI_COMM_WORLD does.

MPI Processes: For this module, we just need to know that processes
belong to the MPI_COMM_WORLD. If there are p processes, then

55
each process is defined by its rank, which starts from 0 to p - 1. Th
master has the rank 0. For example, in this process there are 10 pro-
cesses

MPI Use SSH client (Putty) to login into any of these Multi - Processor
Compute Servers with processors varying from 4 to 15

MPI Include Header File
C: #include "mpi.h"
Fortran:include mpif.h
Python:from mpi4py
import MPI(not available in CC server you can set it up on your lab
workstation)

MPI Smallest MPI library should provide these 6 functions:
MPI_Init - Initialize the MPI execution environment
MPI_Comm_size - Determines the size of the group associated with
acommunictor
MPI_Comm_rank - Determines the rank of the calling process in
thecommunicator
MPI_Send - Performs a basic send
MPI_Recv - Basic receive
MPI_Finalize - Terminates MPI execution environment

MPI Format of MPI Calls:
C and Python names are case sensitive. Fortran names are not.
Example: CALL MPI_XXXXX(parameter,..., ierr) is equivalent to call
mpi_xxxxx(parameter,..., ierr)Programs must not declare variables or
functions with names beginning with the prefix MPI_ or PMPI_ for C
& Fortran. For Python from mpi4py import MPI already ensures that
you dont make the above mistake.

MPIC: rc = MPI_Xxxxx(parameter, ... )Returned as "rc. MPI_SUCCESS
if successful Fortran:CALL MPI_XXXXX(parameter,..., ierr)Returned as

56
"ierr" parameter. MPI_SUCCESS if successfulPython:rc =
MPI.COMM_WORLD.xxxx(parameter,)
20. MPI MPI_InitInitializes the MPI execution environment. This func-
tion mustbe called in every MPI program, must be called before
anyother MPI functions and must be called only once in an MPIpro-
gram.For C programs, MPI_Init may be used to pass the command-
line arguments to all processes, although this is not requiredby the
standard and is implementation dependent.MPI_Init
(&argc,&argv)MPI_INIT (ierr)For python no initialization is required.
21. MPI MPI_Comm_sizeReturns the total number of MPI processes
in the specifiedcommunicator, such as MPI_COMM_WORLD. If
thecommunicator is MPI_COMM_WORLD, then it represents the-
number of MPI tasks available to your application.MPI_Comm_size
(comm,&size)MPI_COMM_SIZE (comm,size,ierr)Where comm is
MPI_COMM_WORLDFor pythonMPI.COMM_WORLD.size is the total
number of MPIprocesses. MPI.COMM_WORLD.Get_size() also re-
turns thesame.
22. MPI MPI_Comm_rankReturns the rank of the calling MPI process
within the specifiedcommunicator. Initially, each process will be as-
signed a unique integerrank between 0 and number of tasks - 1 with-
in the communicatorMPI_COMM_WORLD. This rank is often referred
to as a task ID. If aprocess becomes associated with other communi-
cators, it will have aunique rank within each of these as
well.MPI_Comm_rank (comm,&rank)MPI_COMM_RANK
(comm,rank,ierr)Where comm is MPI_COMM_WORLDFor py-
thonMPI.COMM_WORLD.rank is the total number of MPI process-
es.MPI.COMM_WORLD.Get_rank() also returns the same.
23. MPI MPI_Comm_rankReturns the rank of the calling MPI process
within the specifiedcommunicator. Initially, each process will be as-
signed a unique integerrank between 0 and number of tasks - 1 with-
in the communicatorMPI_COMM_WORLD. This rank is often referred
to as a task ID. If aprocess becomes associated with other communi-
cators, it will have aunique rank within each of these as
well.MPI_Comm_rank (comm,&rank)MPI_COMM_RANK
(comm,rank,ierr)Where comm is MPI_COMM_WORLDFor py-

57
thonMPI.COMM_WORLD.rank is the total number of MPI process-
es.MPI.COMM_WORLD.Get_rank() also returns the same.
24. MPI MPI Hello World Programhttps://gist.github.com/4459911
25. MPIIn MPI blocking message passing routines are more common-
ly used.A blocking MPI call means that the program execution will
besuspended until the message buffer is safe to use. The MPI stand-
ardsspecify that a blocking SEND or RECV does not return until the
sendbuffer is safe to reuse (for MPI_SEND), or the receive buffer is
ready touse (for PI_RECV).The statement after MPI_SEND can safely
modify the memory locationof the array a because the return from
MPI_SEND indicates either asuccessful completion of the SEND pro-
cess, or that the buffercontaining a has been copied to a safe place.
In either case, as buffercan be safely reused.Also, the return of
MPI_RECV indicates that the buffer containing thearray b is full and
is ready to use, so the code segment afterMPI_RECV can safely use b.
26. MPI MPI_SendBasic blocking send operation. Routine returns on-
ly after the applicationbuffer in the sending task is free for re-
use.Note that this routine may be implemented differently on differ-
entsystems. The MPI standard permits the use of a system buffer but
doesnot require it.MPI_Send
(&buf,count,datatype,dest,tag,comm)MPI_SEND
(buf,count,datatype,dest,tag,comm,ierr)comm.send(buf,dest,tag)
27. MPI MPI_SendMPI_Send(void* message, int count,
MPI_Datatype datatype, int destination, int tag, MPI_Comm comm)-
message: initial address of the message- count: number of entries to
send- datatype: type of each entry- destination: rank of the receiving
process- tag: message tag is a way to identify the type of a message-
comm: communicator (MPI_COMM_WORLD)
28. MPIMPI Datatypes
29. MPI MPI_RecvReceive a message and block until the requested
data is available in theapplication buffer in the receiving
task.MPI_Recv
(&buf,count,datatype,source,tag,comm,&status)MPI_RECV
(buf,count,datatype,source,tag,comm,status,ierr)MPI_Recv(void*
message, int count, MPI_Datatype datatype, int source, int tag,

58
MPI_Comm comm, MPI_Status *status)- source: rank of the sending
process- status: return status
30. MPI MPI_FinalizeTerminates MPI execution environmentNote: All
processes must call this routine before exit. The number ofprocesses
running after this routine is called is undefined; it isbest not to per-
form anything more than a return after callingMPI_Finalize.
31. MPI MPI Hello World 2:This MPI program illustrates the use of
MPI_Send and MPI_Recvfunctions. Basically, the master sends a
message, Hello, world, tothe process whose rank is 1, and then af-
ter having received themessage, the process prints the message
along with its rank. https://gist.github.com/4459944
32. MPI Collective communicationCollective communication is a
communication that must have allprocesses involved in the scope of
a communicator. We will be using MPI_COMM_WORLD as our com-
municator; therefore, thecollective communication will include all
processes.
33. MPIMPI_Barrier(comm)This function creates a barrier synchroni-
zation in acommmunicator(MPI_COMM_WORLD). Each task waits
atMPI_Barrier call until all other tasks in the communicator reach
thesame MPI_Barrier call.
34. MPIMPI_Bcast(&message, int count, MPI_Datatype datatype, int
root, comm)This function displays the message to all other processes
inMPI_COMM_WORLD from the process whose rank is root.
35. MPIMPI_Reduce(&message,&receivemessage,int
count,MPI_Datatype datatype,MPI_Op op, int root, comm)This func-
tion applies a reductionoperation on all tasks inMPI_COMM_WORLD
and reducesresults from each process into onevalue. MPI_Op in-
cludes for example,MPI_MAX, MPI_MIN, MPI_PROD,and MPI_SUM,
etc.
36. MPIMPI_Scatter(&message, int count,
MPI_Datatype,&receivemessage, int count, MPI_Datatype, int root,
comm)MPI_Gather(&message, int count,
MPI_Datatype,&receivemessage, int count, MPI_Datatype, int root,
comm)
37. MPI Pi Codehttps://gist.github.com/4460013

59
Works Cited

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MpichCluster
http://byobu.info/article/Building_a_simple_Beowulf_cluster_with_Ubuntu/
https://www.linux.com/community/blogs/133-general-linux/9401
https://www.linux.com/community/blogs/133-general-linux/9401
http://yclept.ucdavis.edu/Beowulf/aboutbeowulf.html
http://cs.boisestate.edu/~amit/research/beowulf/beowulf-setup.pdf
http://www.slideshare.net/ankitmahato/hpc-workshop

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