Beginner help

I have read a lot about HPC's and was really interested in setting up a
small cluster for my college.

To begin with I will be using 30 computers already connected in a LAN
and running Red Hat and Windows XP Professional. I would like to set up
an environment such that a student or faculty can submit a job from
anywhere in the campus and get the result as and when it is done. The
jobs should be queued up in case of rush and then put up on any node
which is free for processing. Now I have 2 doubts or to say problems:
a) These computers are also used for people for surf the net in their
free time. Is it possible that the processing on the job only be done
when the computer is idle (say when no one is logged on or a
screensaver is on)
b) Since I'll be using the colleges computers I won't be allowed to
uninstall or install a new OS..Is it possible to set it up using the
Red Hat Linux itself.?

It would be kind of anyone could help me or atleast redirect me to the
correct website where I can read more about such problem.

Thanks in advance...

<a href="http://oscar.openclustergroup.org/">OSCAR</a> (Open Source
Cluster Application Resources) is a snapshot of the best known methods
for building, programming, and using High Performance Computing (HPC)
clusters. You should also go through
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerwork...ry/l-cluster1/


Roshan wrote:
> I have read a lot about HPC's and was really interested in setting up a
> small cluster for my college.
>
> To begin with I will be using 30 computers already connected in a LAN
> and running Red Hat and Windows XP Professional. I would like to set up
> an environment such that a student or faculty can submit a job from
> anywhere in the campus and get the result as and when it is done. The
> jobs should be queued up in case of rush and then put up on any node
> which is free for processing. Now I have 2 doubts or to say problems:
> a) These computers are also used for people for surf the net in their
> free time. Is it possible that the processing on the job only be done
> when the computer is idle (say when no one is logged on or a
> screensaver is on)
> b) Since I'll be using the colleges computers I won't be allowed to
> uninstall or install a new OS..Is it possible to set it up using the
> Red Hat Linux itself.?
>
> It would be kind of anyone could help me or atleast redirect me to the
> correct website where I can read more about such problem.
>
> Thanks in advance...

> b) Since I'll be using the colleges computers I won't be allowed to
> uninstall or install a new OS..Is it possible to set it up using the
> Red Hat Linux itself.?

Hey, screwing around with a ready installed Linux that you have to take
responsiblity of isn't a good idea. You can instead get (download, buy,
whatever) yourself a ClusterKnoppix Live CD. This will enable you to do
some experimenting with clusters without modifying anything on the
machine itself as you only boot from a CD and everything needed is one
there.

You also get two kinds of cluster computing. The first kind was MOSIX,
where processes migrate to other nodes of the cluster that has
proccessor time available. For this you need to use a MOSIX enabled
kernel, thus compile a new kernel, etc. etc. The other kind is what
OSCAR does. You write scripts to give every computer a piece of a big
job using NFS and SSH. Eg to render a 1000 frames of a movie created in
Blender. You then give every computer 100 frames to render.

Google for ClusterKnoppix, for OSCAR and visit www.mosix.org