Cluster size

From: Butson, Christopher <no email>
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:27:25 +0000

I'm looking at StarCluster for use in simulations using PBS or SGE. This seems like a great tool that could save a lot of development time! The goal is to setup a cluster that can allocate hundreds of nodes (I think these are elastic compute units (ECU) in the Amazon nomenclature), up to a maximum of around 1000. I've read the documentation and have successfully run a small test cluster but I'm still having trouble understanding the relationship between the following:

  1. NODE_INSTANCE_TYPE: I understand that this is the Amazon instance type, but I don't see how this interacts with load balancing or the default template.
  2. DEFAULT_TEMPLATE=smallcluster: Where is this template defined? I note that another is largecluster, but I'm not sure the difference between the two.

  3. Elastic load balancing: This feature makes sense, but is the maximum number of nodes a function of selections I make for the default template or instance type?

Thanks for any insights on how to configure the cluster,
Chris

Christopher R. Butson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Biotechnology & Bioengineering Center
Departments of Neurology & Neurosurgery
Medical College of Wisconsin
(414) 955-2678
cbutson_at_mcw.edu
Received on Tue Feb 26 2013 - 11:27:27 EST