possibilty of clustering in a single box

hey, i was just wondering what you guys though of the possiblity of clustering several comps into a single box?
i want to use this comp not only for a server but as a personal comp as well i already have a few 386 available. i was just looking to this as a cheap alternitive to buying a server (wich i most certainly dont have the money for). i want to run an ftp and a webserve off of these boxes; the reason i want to cluster is alone no one of them have to power to handle this kind of work ( i dont think).

q: do you think this is a practical answer to my problem ?
q: would any of you say that this would be even worth doing? or would i be better off just getting some server space somewhere (i am trying to avoid this because of money issues).
q: should i put these seperate comps into a single box? i do have limited space but do you think the cooling of this box would just take up more space than the boxes do now ?
q: would i have to build a special case or is there a company that offers oversize cases for this purpose?

If you guys have any other suguestions of things i could do they would be most welcome

You are using the term clustering, but I'm not sure what you think you're going to do. You might possibly cluster the systems using a Linux distro that can support clustering. That is an OS solution. The individual systems will function as one larger, more powerful, parallel processing system.

There are others here who could comment better on the possiblities of clustered Linux (but I hear it is a cheap way to make a super-computer).

You could build a box that houses all the mobo's of the systems you have available, but it would take about as much space as the original systems in their original boxes. And, it wouldn't change the fact that they are individual systems, requiring individual memory, power supplies, etc.

??

You can also use Win2k advanced server to build a cluster. You can build an MS "cluster" in one of two ways, using cluster service, or using what is called network load balancing clusters. The NLB cluster is not a cluster in the traditional sense, it is instead a protocol cluster. Both technologies are very stable and work very well. You would however need more power than a 386 can provide.

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You are using the term clustering, but I'm not sure what you think you're going to do. You might possibly cluster the systems using a Linux distro that can support clustering. That is an OS solution. The individual systems will function as one larger, more powerful, parallel processing system.

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i want to do both.... i want to know if it is more effective to condence all the systems to one box or not, in addition to this i was wondering if u would have to reatain moniters for all the systems or if i could direct all the traffic to one moniter?...also what is a good cluster distro of linux?

Placing all the hardware in one container would be great, in theory. But the age of the equipment you mentioned indicates that you would be better off just getting a KVM switch (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) so one monitor, keyboard and mouse can manage multiple systems. Those can be had for about $100 to $200, plus cabling.

If you want to put multiple processors into a single housing, the current technology for this involves blade servers. Since you mentioned a financial limitation that would be out of reach.

For a low-cost method of clustering systems, though, I'd still pursue a clusterable Linux. It's free. the Windows 2000 or 2003 alternatives are very expensive, in comparison and would not run well on your hardware.

As for a recommendation on the Linux, I will bow to the wisdom of the more Linux-knowledgable out there.

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Why the hell do you want to build a Cluster, and what advantage would it be ..

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Well the tech challenge alone would be enough for me.....

Hmmm. I do wonder about using 386's.. wouldn't pentium 100's be better.. esp using RH8/9? you may with rh6.. dunno.. i won't be able to find out.. all my 386/486 mobo's are now works of art... Epoxied and hanging on the wall..

cheers

Try reading around this site for some idea of what will be involved.

http://www.beowulf.org/

Steve

You'd probably have to make sure that the 386 have a math's co-processor to work with the kernel, I could be wrong,

Im going to do a clustering project soonish, Im taking delievery of something like 10 x 800mhz computers soonish, so should be able to construct a good super computer. saying that you can do it nicely with 486's you wont have much power but its a good project.

O'reily's do a good how-to book on clustering with suitable scripts and stuff that you would find useful. Its about beowulf clustering

this link inspired me ages ago http://www.zorg.org/projects/cluster.shtml

openMosix is a useful bit of software which will mean you dont have to re-code applications to run on the cluster

PM me if you have questions maybe we can share info or something

i2c

Linux clustering would definitely be the way to go. Just realize that these systems will have to be dedicated to running server software. Because of the speed of the processors you will not be able to run current desktop environments, OS emulation, or games of any type. If you stick to purely running shells and the limited amount of protocols you described it should work ok.

You do not get any benefits by having them in the same case. You cannot share power supplies as most 386 power supplies are not going to power multiple motherboards. You do not need to worry about a KVS appliance or sharing a monitor as you would only be shelling to the different systems you could use SSH to control the other members of the cluster. You would just need to have a video card/monitor installed at one point to do the initial configuration.

Sounds like a fun project. Just realize that it will not be a simple thing to get it all up and running if you are not at all experienced with clustering software. The information is out there, you will just need to spend some time reading before you start to install all the software.

thanks everybody i have started reading the sites and info you guys provided along with my own research
( i <3 google) i cant wait to start building this box it should be a challange =)

I don't think you comprehend the term "clustering" and how it works in practice. Now I think you are asking about taking something like 4 or 5 old PCs and making them 1 virtual PC. Not possible and you need extra hardware anyway. The CPUs have to share the same storage component for that. Meaning a RAID box or some other external device. In addition the clustering software has huge overhead. It's hard to do and prone to critical failures until everything gets worked out. I haven't built a linux cluster but I have built MS Active/Passive clusters. They are too complicated to be practical in most cases. Meaning cluster failures are extremely hard to recover. I sometimes wish I just built separate boxes and ghosted them vs a cluster. But that's MS eh?

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Originally posted here by mnchur
hey, i was just wondering what you guys though of the possiblity of clustering several comps into a single box?
i want to use this comp not only for a server but as a personal comp as well i already have a few 386 available. i was just looking to this as a cheap alternitive to buying a server (wich i most certainly dont have the money for). i want to run an ftp and a webserve off of these boxes; the reason i want to cluster is alone no one of them have to power to handle this kind of work ( i dont think).

q: do you think this is a practical answer to my problem ?
q: would any of you say that this would be even worth doing? or would i be better off just getting some server space somewhere (i am trying to avoid this because of money issues).
q: should i put these seperate comps into a single box? i do have limited space but do you think the cooling of this box would just take up more space than the boxes do now ?
q: would i have to build a special case or is there a company that offers oversize cases for this purpose?

If you guys have any other suguestions of things i could do they would be most welcome

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using MS advanced server for clustering, you can only create a 2 node cluster, (you can have multiple node on a windows data center OS).

Clustering is not about putting multiple hardware on a single case/box, it's about making multiple PC's to act as a single machine that provides high availability for a client connection.
Cluster solution is not a feasible solution if you're tight on a budget coz you have to have 2 completely built PCs , 2 SCSI controllers, 4 NICs, at least 4 SCSI hdd's and a SSD to house the HDD's and of course 2 licenses for win2k advanced server which we all know costs a lot... now with regards to your 386 machines, the question is wether they can support this win2k advanced sever (or let me say Linux advanced server, if you prefer linux, sorry i don't have enuf knowledge abt linux :) ) and also wether they can support the SCSI controller for your SSD's and i think current PCI SCSI controllers can't be supported by a 386 machine.

to answer your questions:


q: do you think this is a practical answer to my problem ? - no it's not, it's the most expensive answer to your needs


q: would any of you say that this would be even worth doing? or would i be better off just getting some server space somewhere (i am trying to avoid this because of money issues). - it's cheaper to have your page hosted, more cheaper and less trouble some, you'll have to leave everything to the company that hosts your site like maintenence, security availability etc, if you'll host it on you're own you have to buy the neccessary equipments and at the same time pay for your domain name.


q: should i put these seperate comps into a single box? i do have limited space but do you think the cooling of this box would just take up more space than the boxes do now ? think of this...you need a customized case that have multiple power supply to attach to your diff mobo's, or lemme say stack your pc and tie it in a bundle, that is how it'll look like. no need to cool a 386, it doest generate that much heat, try using AMD XP 2000 and above processors, you'll know what i mean.


q: would i have to build a special case or is there a company that offers oversize cases for this purpose? haven't heared of them


i think the best way for you is to have your site hosted, or if you want, buy a mid range pc, use linux (they come with software that suits your needs) or use windows 2000 server, comes with IIS to host your site, have an ftp server and at the same time a machine for you to tinker around, now, the question of high availability can be answered by clustering.

I hope this helps :)

I made a post about linux clustering with OpenMosix: http://www.antionline.com/showthread...218#post622815

BBalad can probably give you more info about Beowulf cause he had such a thing running.
A linux cluster with such old boxes would be a real technological challenge, I would suggest using old Pentium I or 80486 boxes instead of 80386. A lot also depends on the interconnection between the boxes, to keep it still low budget and fast choose fast switched Ethernet.

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Originally posted here by mnchur
[B]hey, i was just wondering what you guys though of the possiblity of clustering several comps into a single box?
i want to use this comp not only for a server but as a personal comp as well i already have a few 386 available. i was just looking to this as a cheap alternitive to buying a server (wich i most certainly dont have the money for). i want to run an ftp and a webserve off of these boxes; the reason i want to cluster is alone no one of them have to power to handle this kind of work ( i dont think).

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I wonder quite why you would want to do this.

M$ Clustering: Only works on certain cluster-aware applications (Mostly MSSQL Server). Requires very very expensive M$ Windows Advanced server licences, which will massively dwarf the cost of even very powerful brand new machines. This makes it unsuitable for clustering old boxes.

Other types of clustering:

There is something called "Single system image" (M$ does not have single system images in its clustering), which makes >1 machine appear exactly as one machine.

Not very much clustering software does single system image, because it is very tricky.

Mosix or OpenMosix is however a single system image cluster.

BUT it is very bad for applications like web servers etc, as they require a lot of networking.

As far as I'm aware, there isn't any practical way of doing what you intend.

Slarty

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Originally posted here by RoadClosed
I don't think you comprehend the term "clustering" and how it works in practice. Now I think you are asking about taking something like 4 or 5 old PCs and making them 1 virtual PC. Not possible and you need extra hardware anyway. The CPUs have to share the same storage component for that. Meaning a RAID box or some other external device. In addition the clustering software has huge overhead. It's hard to do and prone to critical failures until everything gets worked out. I haven't built a linux cluster but I have built MS Active/Passive clusters. They are too complicated to be practical in most cases. Meaning cluster failures are extremely hard to recover. I sometimes wish I just built separate boxes and ghosted them vs a cluster. But that's MS eh?

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I'd have to disagree with you on the practicality of a cluster. We have 10 clusters here at work, each one being active passive supporting exchange with 7k subscribers per cluster. We are currently running at 99.999% availibility(202 dpm) for the year. We have never experienced a major failure because of clustering. Most of the failures we have experienced have been application failures. In those cases clustering will only speed up the recovery process. However we have not had a hardware outage exceed 5 minutes in three years. I don't have a single complaint about MS clustering. It has a very steep learning curve, but it is a very well documented product.

Also, in linux you can do distributed computing clusters where the storage is not shared. In windows you can do a Network load balance cluster where, once again, the storage device is not shared. There are several different forms of clustering.

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Originally posted here by slarty

Other types of clustering:

There is something called "Single system image" (M$ does not have single system images in its clustering), which makes >1 machine appear exactly as one machine.

Not very much clustering software does single system image, because it is very tricky.

Mosix or OpenMosix is however a single system image cluster.

BUT it is very bad for applications like web servers etc, as they require a lot of networking.

As far as I'm aware, there isn't any practical way of doing what you intend.

Slarty

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Slarty- Win2k NLB clusters allow you to do a concept of one with protocol servers. For instance, you can take 4 different machines that each have two NICs. You assign one NIC to function as the public NIC, and one to function as a cluster private NIC. Each NIC is assigned it's own unique IP, as well as you assign a group IP to all of the public NICs. Then using the private cluster NIC each member of the NLB cluster shares the load of all inbound traffic. This works wonders for load balancing web servers or front end protocol servers(OWA,IMAP,POP3, SMTP). Full fault tolerance is maintained as servers are automatically taken out of the mix if they stop serving requests. NLB clusters can be configured to provide redundancy on any port. It just requires that the application be capable of handling requests from multiple nodes. Most applications that would require this level of availability work flawlessly with NLB clustering.

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Originally posted here by mohaughn
You can also use Win2k advanced server to build a cluster. You can build an MS "cluster" in one of two ways, using cluster service, or using what is called network load balancing clusters. The NLB cluster is not a cluster in the traditional sense, it is instead a protocol cluster. Both technologies are very stable and work very well. You would however need more power than a 386 can provide.

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You couldnt use 2k Advanced server because the basic system needs at least a 133 MGHZ processor. I dont think that there were any 386 133 MGHZ processors.

If you have a couple hundred bucks, you could get a Dell Poweredge Small Business Server and run it off of that on Linux. Dell's PowerEdge Series starts at $299. (After $100 rebate)

I think RoadClosed's comment about the practicality of clustering (MS or Linux) was meant as applies to small networks or groups of servers. Clustering requires a significant amount of time, effort and resources to set up. Of course, when you expend that, you also have to have a very good reason to do so, especially in the real world.

Sounds like mnchur wants to build a learning project. More power to mnchur.

Not sure that you'll be able to get the 386's to handle the memory, or Linux version needed to run any kind of cluster. They definitely will have to be 386DX's, with math coprocessors. Anything less will not work, I think.

Only 1 thing to think about.... if you want acluster, that means you need a minimum of 2 chips, 2 sets of ram, 2 NICs, etc etc.... basically you need at least 2 motherboards. Now if you are trying to do this in one box, that means you are going to have a lot of hardware cramed in a small sace which meas you got a lot of work to do to keep the thing cool.

This whole exercise seems like far more work and money in customization than it's worth. I'd just pick up a couple of barebones type boxes and build them up into a decent cluster. Less work, less hassle, less cash.

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I'd have to disagree with you on the practicality of a cluster. We have 10 clusters here at work, each one being active passive supporting exchange with 7k subscribers per cluster. We are currently running at 99.999% availibility(202 dpm) for the year

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That is exactly why you would want to cluster, availability. My point was it's hard to engineer and not practical in most cases. I use it for Exchange in an Active Passive configuration. The cluster shares the same quorum and one of the many controller cards corrupted it the quorum. With so many parts it was hard to find the actual hardware fault because it wasn't a black and white failure. So they can be much harder to troubleshoot than single boxes, plus the software alone will kill you with Microsoft. So it's not practical in most situations and not a whole lot of software supports it. The software has to be "cluster aware" meaning it takes advantage of the cluster APIs and knows the condition of the cluster so that it can initiate changes and redirect it's I/O to the active clustering components. My comment was fiscal and not technological ;)


Now we are all talking about expensive advance clustering. NT has clustering services as well, so that is an option.

Heatwave is correct, to cluster you have to have redundant EVERYTHING, otherwise why bother? I even have redundant network paths.

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This whole exercise seems like far more work and money in customization than it's worth. I'd just pick up a couple of barebones type boxes and build them up into a decent cluster. Less work, less hassle, less cash.

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Sounds like allot of us have experience, so let us know what you plan because some situations won't work with clusters and I would hate to see anyone makes some of the errors I have.

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Originally posted here by CXGJarrod


You couldnt use 2k Advanced server because the basic system needs at least a 133 MGHZ processor. I dont think that there were any 386 133 MGHZ processors.

If you have a couple hundred bucks, you could get a Dell Poweredge Small Business Server and run it off of that on Linux. Dell's PowerEdge Series starts at $299. (After $100 rebate)

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In regards to the original question I had already stated that Win2k was not at all going to be the solution. The conversation had turned more to being about general clustering technologies. It really sounded to me like he wanted to build a distributed computing cluster, in which case an older linux kernel wouldn't definitely run on the hardware that he stated as having.

Hi Guys,

Manchur............they will ship this Saturday..........guess it is about 7-9 snail to the USA?

I will write:

"obsolete computer components, for educational research...value $1" on the US customs declaration form.....They are going to your University address.

OK...slight "terminological inexactitude"...........I was given them for free....I think the used postage stamps on the packet will be worth more than the contents :D

There are 2 "IT's ST" 486/66/DX2s (Canadian...never heard of them before?)..............maths co-processor enabled and one Intel of an identical spec. I do not believe you can do what you are proposing with anything less than a 486/DX?. BTW I do not know what the fourth one is..a 486/DX2 but of unknown origin...that's the one with the cooling fan and heatsink already attached :)

Please keep us informed......and post a PICTURE if you get it to work

Good luck & God bless

Johnno

did you think about buying buncha xbox's and installing linux and cluster them

they are only 179.99 new but you can buy factory refurbished for less ... i have a cluster of 2 just for shits and giggles. one had modchip and the other is was hacked by exploit... they run sweet

xbox is basically pentium 3 celeron 733MHz w/ 64 megs of RAM

sweet and fast....

each comes w/ 10 gig HD so if you want bigger space you'll have to get replacement HD's BUT if you have a DVD burner you can burn on DVD and xbox will read it fast w/out a problem

Ok guys there is a big diference between MS "clustering" wich is basicly load balanceing for MSSQL and clustering (makeing more then one pc act as one.) I have done the latter useing linux and beowulf (both free) and a bunch of 486's, this was a neat project but not overly usefull as you will only get an advantage with programs that can multithread. You can do real clustering useing windows as your main OS but it involves *very* expensive 3rd party software.