[Bioclusters] Debian cluster

[A.J. Rossini]

Jonathan Barber <jon@compbio.dundee.ac.uk> writes:

>> Anyhow, just wanted to pass along those lessons I've learned.  Good luck, 
>> and let me know how Debian works out as the basis for a cluster.  I might 
>> rebuild mine from RH9 to Debian if you have great successes. :)
>
> Just to add some information, there is a dedicated drop in cache for
> debian, apt-proxy, which will probably reduce the network load quite a
> lot. Just alter your source's list to point at it and you're away.

If you want a fast and easy version, install (and configure, but that
is trivial) apt-move and apache on the prime machine, and it will set
up a mirror that the other machines can use.  Combine this with
jablicator/replicator, and you've got a simple and  great mechanism
(post-FAI) for keeping the packages (and kernels, etc) in sync.  

I've run (small) debian HPC (not high-availability) clusters for many
years now.  There are some gotchas, depending on what you want to do
(PVM isn't the most recent, some work is a bit of a pain, less
documented/automated than RedHat/RPM-distro based clusters), but all
in all, it rocks.

best,
-tony

-- 
rossini@u.washington.edu            http://www.analytics.washington.edu/ 
Biomedical and Health Informatics   University of Washington
Biostatistics, SCHARP/HVTN          Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
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