Building Clustered Linux Systems (Hewlett-Packard Professional Books (Paperback))

Rating:
Summary: This is the place to start.
Review: Cluster supercomputers became originated when NASA had a need for another supercomputer but no budge to buy one. The particular tasks that they needed to perform tended to have a lot of parallelism. That is, they could benefit by having a bunch of systems work on small tasks and then bring the results together. An example of an ideal parallel application is provessing seismic data. Basically you have the signals to process from a bunch of sensors and each data stream is independent of the other until the end of the process. An example of a non-parallel system is inventory. When you are increasing or decreasing inventory, you only have one bin of this part, and two CPU's better not sell the same part twice.

Anyway Don Becker and some others proposed using a cluster of PC's to handle the tasks. They wrote a software package called Beowulf to run under Linux. Linus had two real advantages: stability and cost. It's much more stable than Microsoft systems and it's free. This, as is often the case in the computer biz, started a landslide.

This book is the most complete I've read on how to build a cluster. It goes extensively into every aspect. It talks about the architecture of the various CPU's in use (Itanium, Xeron, Opteron), high speed interconnection systems (Myricom, Infiniband, Dolphin, Quadrics), available software (Suse, Red Hat, management systems) -- in short everything you need to get the system up and running.

If you're new to clustering, here is an integrated, step by step approach to getting the system up. Of course you'll need more books later (FORTRAN, Message Passing Interface, etc.) but this is the place to start.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisitely detailed, eminently practical, quite readable
Review: I'm a sr software engineer who deployed to server farms and occasionally writes parallelized software for deployment to our linux cluster. While reaching depths of detail even beyond my interest or understanding, Lucke explains very clearly how clusters work, how they should be designed and tuned, and why this is a compelling architecture for a wide variety of computing problems. The book covers hardware, software, networking, NFS issues, data and system security and management - even the business/economic implications and the physical heat limits of various installations.

The most comprehensive, accurate and accessible book on linux clusters.

Rating:
Summary: Cluster Genetics
Review: If you are determined to understand clustering, look no further. This is your compass and guide. The author takes you under the hood and empowers you with cluster mechanics. Without a doubt anyone venturing in clustering should own this book.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely thorough
Review: This book addresses Linux clusters in an extremely thorough fashion. There is an excellent history and description of the problem to arrive at the definition of a "Linux cluster". The different types of clusters (high performance, throughput, availability) are well described so you know what the goal is of the cluster you will be working on. There are well-defined objectives at the start of each chapter. I also found the transition from theoretical to practical to be very good. I am impressed with this book.