Ebook Linux Cluster Architecture Alex Vrenios 9780672323683 Books

Product details Paperback 264 pages Publisher Sams Publishing; 1 edition (June 28, 2002) Language English ISBN-10 0672323680

Linux Cluster Architecture Alex Vrenios 9780672323683 Books Reviews

• I am reading some books in order to set up a Linux Cluster.
  And I found this book, by far, the best. Maybe, because in this field I am a beginner.
• My book DOES contain information that every sysadmin knows, and it ALSO contains information that every C programmer knows. My POINT in including this material is that a sysadmin doesn't know much about C; nor does a C programmer know much about networking; I included both so that both types of readers can expand their knowledge enough to actually build a working cluster computer!
  
  I should also note that the older kernel was used to TEST the software. That means you can run it on a bunch of cheap computers, and not have to spend thousands of dollars on high performance processors. That old kernel is NOT a requirement, as some readers might believe.
  
  One final note if you have a bunch of PCs on a network, that's ALL you've got. It's the software that makes them work together as a "team" of individual processors, toward some common goal. That's about the clearest definition of a "cluster" that I've come across.
  
  The (debugged) software described in my book is available from the Sams Publishing web site for free download. It works just fine on my current cluster running CentOS 4, which is the free OS version of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 4. (That's just one generation ago. It's like running XP instead of Vista, like most of us do at home and at work.)
  
  There are some issues related to the (then) R-commands rsh and rcp, for example are suggested as a test for network connectivity. Shortly after the book came out, Linux dropped these in favor of the secure S-commands, like ssh and scp. A few minutes of your time reading the latest MAN (help manual) pages should bring you up to date.
• I found this book by shelf-shopping at MicroCenter in Dallas. My brother, who is a mechanical engineer, mentioned needing a cluster computer for his work. It was the first I'd ever heard about this sort of contraption, although I've been a hardware-hacker for years, and have played around with Slackware and RedHat since 1996.
  
  "Linux Cluster Architecture" is an excellent place to start. It has a lot of basic hardware background, including a compelling argument for using the obsolete "digital doorstop" computers that clutter your guest room floor. (There's also a lot of C code in the book, which I skipped over, because I don't do programming.)
  
  Following successful hardware configuration on three junkers, I bought "The Red Hat Bible" and continued with the setup. The newest computer became the Master and the identical-twins became Nodes, using RedHat 9.
  
  That done, I gave the Homemade Cray and "Linux Cluster Architecture" to my brother, and he's using the book to learn about distributed loads. He is well-versed in C++ and in FORTRAN, and says that the programs are just what he needs to get started.
• I've been dealing with Linux clustering for a while. I found the basic and difficult concepts are well explained and useful for newbies and more experienced. The book makes you want to read more with interesting, practical sample codes. The author is very knowledgeble and hits a nail right on the head.
  Although, some topics seem outdated, the underlying concepts holds through time. You're gonna enjoy tuning and adjusting it to fit your system environment. There is no abusolte solution for every system. As long as you understand what the book explains and many useful examples, you'll never get lost with lastest technologies and be equied with some solutions in mind. The rest is up to you to work on your cluster piece by piece. That's the beaty of clustering.
  I love the sections of Distributed Server Process in action, external performance measurement and analysis - estimating and displaying network utilization, inter-process commincation - messaging and more. I think most information in this book could not be found anywhere, even on the web.
• This book shows how to assemble and configure several PCs into a network, how to configure Linux so each machine recognizes the others. It has example C programs showing how to do subtasking, and how these processes can communicate using shared memory, or sockets. The simple examples are expanded, showing how to set up a service that starts on a remote machine when I send a message to its registered port. There are details on how to send queries to the cluster server using different statistical distributions, and on how to monitor and display their response times. There is complete system-wide performance monitoring software, based on the /proc pseudo-file statistics. Each node machine is displayed on a separate monitor node that shows CPU and Memory use, disk and network I/O, etc.
  This book is complete I don't have to install any third-party software like PVM or MPI. And I can customize the example system because I can download all the source code form the publisher's web site.
• This is the first book I have found that actually tells you how to build up your cluster. Yes, it is technical. But it actually talks about everyman-hardware not just the high-end unobtainable. I came at this project from a power-user perspective in the *nix world. I can build up a Novell or MS network in a snap but some of the *nix topics are new to me, like shared memory across the network. When I built up my cluster I ran into a few problems. I contacted the published and within a couple of days Alex wrote back. Together we spent the next 3 weeks emailing back and forth. I would make a change, reinstall the OS, etc. Alex hung in there and helped me get everything running. That was a first for me, an author that actually cares.