CEG's Linux User Group

For beginners let me give a small introduction to clusters.

A computer cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely so that in many respects they form a single computer. Clusters are generally connected by a fast Local Area Network. Parallel programs that run on one of the nodes uses the processing power of all the nodes and produces the result. Generally clusters are tightly coupled ie. All the motherboards will be stacked into a single cabinet and connected using some interconnection network. They'll share RAM, Hard Disk and other peripherals. Operating System runs on one of the nodes and controls the activities of other nodes. For more on Clusters, refer the Wiki Page.

Beowulf Clusters are cheap clusters created using off the shelf components. You can create a Beowulf cluster with just a few crap computers and an ethernet segment in your backyard. Although they don't give you top-notch performance, their performance is many-fold better than a single computer. A variant of Beowulf Clusters allows OS to run on every node and still allow parallel processing. And this is what exactly we're going to do here.