Phoenix Cluster

Phoenix is a 16-node cluster for parallel processing and InfiniBand research.

This page provides Phoenix users and administrators with a unified resource to all Phoenix related material. The “Hardware Configuration”, “Software Configuration”, and “General Information” sections provide information about the physical machine and its software environment. The “For Users” section provides information for using the cluster, and the “For Administrators” section provides information for administering the cluster.

Each node contains:

• 2 x 2.4 GHz AMD Opteron processors
• 4 GB PC2700 DDR333 registered memory
• Mellanox InfiniBand 4X HCA
• Gigabit Ethernet

Only the head node, phoenix.springfield.cs.unm.edu, contains disks. The other 15 nodes must be booted from the network.
The Phoenix rack also contains a 24 port InfiniBand switch, a remotely accessible console/terminal switch, and a 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switch (phx-switch).

Note: The Mellanox InfiniBand HCA on Phx10 died and was replaced with an InfiniCon InfiniServe 4X HCA.

All nodes run x86_64 Fedora 10 with a 2.6.27 Linux kernel:

[jdoe@phoenix ~]$ uname -a
Linux phoenix 2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Nov 18 11:58:53 EST 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[jdoe@phoenix ~]$ cat /etc/fedora-release 
Fedora release 10 (Cambridge)

Current administrator is Philip.
Current sudoers are Manjunath, Edgar, Mary, and Rosh.

• Booting a Compute Node
• Compute Node Setup
• Ethernet Cables
• Root File Systems

• InfiniBand
• Monitoring
• MPI
• Pop C++
• Running Programs
• Services
• XCPU

This section includes information for administrators ranging from installing software to upgrading the Linux distribution.

• Cron Jobs
• Hardware
• Installing Software
• Manuals
• Miscellaneous
• Rebooting
• IP KVM
• Terminal Server
• Upgrading the Linux Distribution

Phoenix has a compatibility issue with syslinux. The first line of input in the bootloader is not correctly recognized. So if you are, for example, installing Fedora Core 4, you MUST first enter a line of gibberish before typing your boot parameters. This big is documented here:

http://www.iwill.net/product_imgs/90/Fedora_Core_4_x86_64_installation_issue.PDF

— Donour Sizemore 2006/03/10 17:44