[cluster-l] Welcome to cluster-l!

[Tim Skirvin]

        Welcome to cluster-l!  Or whatever it is that we want to call this
group; I know that that name isn't very elegant.  

        Some background: I'm the head sysadmin for the Theoretical and
Computational Biophysics Group at the Beckman Institute.  I'm interested
in Linux clusters primarily because a good portion of my job is to run the
things; we've currently got six 48-processor clusters running in our group, 
and are currently putting together a budget to buy several more.  

        Over the last year or so, my co-workers and I have put together
a series of cluster-building workshops.  The point of these workshops
was to share some of the hard-earned knowledge that we had gained from
putting together four generations of Linux clusters, rather than letting
others make the same mistakes that we had once made.  The focus has been
on small- to medium-sized clusters, or anything that a research group
could reasonably fund by writing a grant.  These workshops were quite
successful, or at least that's what our feedback said...

        ...but in the grand scheme of things, this was only a start.
Our advice was helpful towards putting together your first cluster, or
learning more effectively what decisions had gone into the cluster that
you're running on; but there wasn't much on maintenance, or planned
growth, or applications, or any of the myriad of other cluster-related
problems that we face every day, and which are a whole lot more difficult
to run a workshop on.  

        That's where this list comes in.

        What I hope to put together with this mailing list:


        o A community of users that can share their experiences (and
horror stories) regarding their cluster experiences from all angles,
including purchase and design, operations, applications, decommisioning,
etc.  

        o A resource for anybody that's looking to put together a new
cluster to ask questions, including ones that we couldn't include in the 
workshop (like "what specific hardware should I buy?", which varies by
time and application dramatically).

        o Semi-regular (monthly?  Quarterly?  Semesterly?) meetings to
discuss this stuff in person, possibly over... beverages.


        Initially, all of this is directed at the UIUC community; but
there's no reason that it would have to stay so local.  Contributors from
the community are welcome, and ideally, we could spread out to be useful
to the world at large...  Academic clusters are not a UIUC-specific
problem, after all.

        As with many things, this list is going to be what its members
make of it.  If anything useful comes of this list at all, I'll be happy.
So... discuss!  Document!  Suggest interesting problems that you haven't
solved, or interesting problems that you *have* solved!  And, all in all,
welcome aboard...

                            - Tim Skirvin (tskirvin at ks.uiuc.edu)
-- 
   Theoretical and Computational    http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~tskirvin/
Biophysics, Beckman Institute, UIUC    Senior Systems Administrator
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