[CentOS] Cloud Computing

Sun Jul 19 01:56:40 UTC 2009
Bogdan Nicolescu <bo2k2 at yahoo.com>





----- Original Message ----
> From: Ryan J M <sync.jma at gmail.com>
> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 8:59:02 AM
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] Cloud Computing
> 
> On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Mattwrote:
> > Is anyone creating a cloud based on Centos yet?
> >
> > Ubuntu seems to be quite active there:
> >
> > http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/cloud/uec
> >
> >
> 
> So there still has no CENTOS HPC solution provided yet, has upstreamer
> disclosed the source?
> 
> ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/RHHPC still not accessable.
> 
> 
> -- 
> FIXME if it is wrong.
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RedHat HPC = Platform OCS (www.platform.com) + RHEL + kits
http://vglug.info/files/HPC_Webinar_1-15-09.pdf (mentions platform OCS)
http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/hpc/1.0/pdf/Installation_Guide.pdf 

kits = a base kit, in this case RHEL and few self contained cluster-oriented applications (i.e. openmpi, lava, ganglia)

"RedHat HPC" comes with the two DVDs.  One DVD containing Platform OCS, second DVD contains RHEL and a few (8-10) kits.

When installing "RedHat HPC", first you boot in Platform OCS (which itself is based on RH), you go through some basic configuration, and then you are asked for the kits.  You insert the RHEL+kits disk, where it extracts the RHEL base and various kits.  Instruction's in RH Installation guide assumes you are installing OCS on top of RH.  I only did a fresh installed so I started with OCS, and added RHEL as a kit.

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previously Platform OCS (version 4) was based on Rocks Linux, and old docs might not be compatible.
currently Platform OCS (version 5) is based on open source Project Kusu (http://www.hpccommunity.org/).  Project Kusu seems to be now part of www.platform.com
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now for Centos HPC.

go to http://www.hpccommunity.org (currently down on my end), go to project kusu, and pick up the Centos installer, configured to work with Centos, (burn iso image).  This is the first disk, the equivalent of Platform OCS.  Assuming a new installation, and not an installation of kusu on top of centos.  Boot using Kusu disk. Go through the setup, and at some point you'll be asked to install kits.  Here, you insert the DVD containing Centos 5.3

Kusu comes with 2-3 kits, but installing new kits is not too difficult (see kusu docs), and probably a good practice in case you have to install a non-preconfigured kit, ie intel compiler.

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Unfortunatelly, based on the forum activity hpccommunity.org doesn't seem to be a very active community.  Also hpccommunity.org was previously http://osgdc.org/ (probably before merging with platform.ocs).  

Another project which seems to have branched off, and share a base with kusu is unicluster -> www.grid.org parent company univaud.com.  Unfortunatelly, this too is as active as kusu, but there is enough documentation to get it going.

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I hope this layering of applications, where RH bundles 3rd party applications and then puts it under the RH hat, doesn't become the norm.