Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters [Paperback]

Charles Bookman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1578702747 | ISBN-13: 978-1578702749 | Publication Date: June 29, 2002 | Edition: 1

Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters provides Linux users with information about building their own Linux cluster from the ground up. It gives best practices, helpful hints, and guidelines about building one server or hundreds of servers at a level that administrators at any experience level can understand.

From installation of the air conditioning and power in the data center, to alternative file systems to the final production run, this book provides you with everything that you need to know. Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters walks you through the initial design and selection of the best possible types of clusters, as well as covering monitoring tools and providing for disaster recovery. Not only does this book provide information on parallel and Beowulf type clusters, Charles Bookman goes into depth on high availability clusters, load balancing, and provides advice for writing your own distributing applications as well. Incorporating best practices and cutting-edge approaches, Bookman provides step-by-step and tried-and-true methods of bringing up a Linux cluster to production level.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

About the AuthorAbout the Author Charles Bookman fell in love with the personal computer when he was 12. He would stay after school to teach himself programming on the Commodore Pet. His experiences with Linux started during the 2.0.30 days, when he took the work computer at his counseling job and converted it into something that nobody there had ever seen. After they fired him, he knew that he was on to something, and has been a Linux evangelist ever since. Charles' hobbies include being up to no good, using sarcasm, listening to music, being snobbish about art, playing bass and guitar, and painting and drawing when he finds the time. He'll kick your butt at table tennis, and is learning a great game of pool as well. Charles currently works at the University of the Pacific as a UNIX systems administrator, maintaining its high-performance cluster. He runs a design company, and consults in his spare time. © Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Linux has been increasing in popularity ever since its inception. With theexplosive growth of the open-source movement and the viability of what it can dowith an alternative operating system, Linux has grown into a mature, stableenvironment in which to host mission-critical applications and research.

It's this very nature of Linux and its open-source code that makes itattractive for hobbyists, educators, and research environments. Thousands ofprograms are available to enhance the user experience and allow the seriousadministrator to enhance or create his environment with Linux. It's thisflexibility and maturity of the operating system that allows people to easilycluster their Linux machines.

Having two or more machines act in concert with one another isn't rocketscience; in fact, anyone with any motivation and a skill for reading a book canmake computers do wondrous things. From load balancing to developing a thousandnode parallel computer, Linux is more than able to handle the task.

This book takes you through the construction of several types of clusteringby using Linux, and explains step by step how to get there. We'll coverhandy tips on the way, as well as explain why things work the way they do. In notime, you'll be able to create high availability and Beowulf type clusterswith the best of them.

Who Should Read This Book

This book is for Linux enthusiasts and users who want to get a Linux clusterup and running with the least amount of fuss. Administrators will find this bookparticularly helpful in learning the why's and how's of getting Linuxto do amazing things with more than one computer at your disposal.

This book will help if you need to introduce a large parallel or distributedcomputing cluster to your environment, and the ways that one can solve largecomputational problems using Linux. Methods to install, maintain, and back uplarge cluster farms are discussed. We'll also cover the software andhardware needed to create such a solution.

If you're looking for an enterprise-level load balancing orhigh-availability solution to your environment, Chapters 5 and 6 coverinstallation and configuration of Linux solutions to these issues. Not only doesthis book cover the basics behind these, but it also tells the best practicesand methods to get a solution up in the quickest amount of time. Softwareinstallation and configuration examples are given to bring readers up tospeed.

Who This Book Is Not For

This book assumes that the reader is comfortable with Linux. It does not leadthe user though basic tasks, such as installation of the operating system,adding users, or window manager configuration. More knowledge might need to begarnered to bring the user up to speed.

This book is also not for seasoned professionals who have a deepunderstanding of clustering. This book does not cover performance tuning or deepcluster theory. This book is specifically designed for those who need a clusterup, now. This book is not designed for those who already have a cluster plannedor running in their environment.

Overview

This book is divided into four parts that describe the planning andconfiguration of Linux clusters. Part I is designed as an introduction toplanning and configuring the environment that is needed to bring a cluster up tospeed in the shortest possible time. Part II is devoted to the installation andsupport of the various types of Linux clusters. Part III introduces programminglibraries and what to do when a cluster fails.

Part I is separated into four chapters. Chapter 1, "ClusteringFundamentals," briefly introduces Linux clustering in general, and why itmight be applicable to you or your environment. Chapter 2, "Preparing yourLinux Cluster," discusses how best to select the parts that are needed toinstall your cluster and the environment in which it's housed. Chapter 3,"Installing and Streamlining the Cluster," discusses best practicemethods on how to install large numbers of machines in the shortest and easiestamount of time. Chapter 4, "Alternative File Systems," discusses thelimitations of the current standard file system, ext2, and discusses othermethods to improve on it, and file system tricks.

Part II includes four chapters that deal with the clustering technologiesthemselves. Chapter 5, "High Availability and Fault-TolerantClusters," introduces high-availability systems, how they work, and howbest to implement the hardware and software. Chapter 6, "LoadBalancing," talks about the best ways that Linux can direct traffic tomultiple machines. Chapter 7, "Distributed Computing," introduces thedistributed model as a means to solve large computational problems. Chapter 8,"Parallel Computing," also expands on this model in a slightlydifferent approach. This chapter is skewed to parallel and commoditycomputers.

Part III deals with the care and feeding of a cluster. Chapter 9,"Programming a Parallel Cluster," references programming libraries andprograms that illustrate these libraries. Chapter 10, "ClusterManagement," discusses best practices to keep your cluster in check andmonitored for problems. The final chapter, Chapter 11, "Recovering WhenDisaster Strikes," deals primarily with disaster recovery.

Part IV contains reference material for the cluster designer. Appendix Aincludes cluster resources on the web and where to find more information.Appendix B is a reference for Kickstart options for Red Hat Linux. Using theseoptions, one can populate a cluster in no time with an unattended install.Appendix C details DHCP options in greater depth for the cluster, so that onecan maintain large clusters in a central location with ease. Finally, Appendix Ddetails class attributes for Condor, which is a distributed environmentcluster.

If you're familiar with clusters in general, it might behoove you toperuse Part I and move right on to Part II where the cluster you'reinterested in is discussed. You'll want to hit Part III right after becauseof the information that discusses keeping your applications and servers up.

Conventions

This book follows a few typographical conventions:

• Italics indicate new terms the first time they're introduced, and are used for emphasis.

• A special monospace font indicates code, a filename or pathname, or an Internet address.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Sams; 1 edition (June 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578702747
• ISBN-13: 978-1578702749
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,247,670 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Alas, a good Linux Clustering book has yet to be written, June 20, 2003

By 

SPK - See all my reviews

This review is from: Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters (Paperback)

The book is divided into eleven chapters, unevenly distributed among three sections: an overview of clustering for Linux, building clusters, and maintaining clusters. Four appendices provide brief information about online clustering resources, options for RedHat's "Kickstart," options for DHCP, and information on "Condor ClassAd Machine Attributes."

Bookman provides a central piece of wisdom that no system administrator should ignore: redundancy. In the case of high availability clusters, parts redundancy is the name of the game, but one should not forget the human component; no administrator should be caught with only a cell phone-keep a pager just in case. However, in a post-modern turn that might seem brilliant if it were applied in a work of fiction rather than a technical book, the author seems to apply the concept of redundancy to the text itself.

That the book began not as a book but rather as a collection of talks or presentations, or some other smaller format, is evidenced by the repetition of information between chapters and sections. Such nearly poetic repetitions also occur within sentences and paragraphs (e.g. "nightly backups each night" on page 25).

An editor never looked at Linux Clustering; the book had two "technical reviewers" but their contributions didn't include fixing mangled syntax and strained "style." On page 14 in the second paragraph a large segment of a sentence from the previous page is pasted into another sentence, resulting in a nonsensical block of text. The number of hyphenation, syntax, word choice, and subject-verb agreement errors is atrocious and makes the book difficult to read.

Some of the misinformation in the text appears to be unintentional (but ignorance is no excuse for a UNIX systems administrator); some is due to the fact that the author deals only with old (2.2) kernels, old versions of journeling filesystems, and old distributions; and yet other misinformation is the result of misplaced attempts at humor (such as stating that GNU stands for the Gateway Naming Utility; one can only hope that this was intended to be funny). Other jokes often misfire, but do point to the intended audience (consider, for example, the section heading "Space: The Final Frontier").

In the Introduction the author indicates that the book should be read by "Linux enthusiasts and users who want to get a Linux cluster up and running with the least amount of fuss." The organization of the book will not, however, aid this enterprise, for there is little "how to" information provided, but rather a great deal of background information on compiling kernels, various types of journeling file systems, and RedHat's Kickstart (perhaps inappropriate considering that the book specifically states that basic information will not be covered). Another section or two deal with basic networking and security. Various types of clusters are discussed, as are a few of the types of clustering software (e.g. Condor and Mosix) available.

The book, however, is clearly intended for administrators of clustering systems; a special emphasis is high availability and load balancing clusters. Parallel computing and the types of applications end users would wish to run receive far too little discussion.

Almost all technical books regurgitate the contents of freely available FAQs and HOWTOs to some degree, yet the good ones summarize the relevant points, make dry documentation more accessible, and give the reader some new insights. Because Bookman's Linux Clustering suffers from heinous spelling, grammar, and style errors; deals primarily with outdated software; contributes little new to the discussion; and doesn't speak to non-admins, I can only recommend that those interested in Linux clustering stick to online FAQs and HOWTOs; O'Reilly's offering on the topic was no more respectable.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Consider the Alternatives., July 4, 2003

By 

Charles Bookman (Stockton, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters (Paperback)

I'm the author.

Are you looking for a book on cluster processor communication? Are you looking for message passing benchmarks? If so, this is not the book for you.

Clustering is not difficult. Those that try to pull the wool over your eyes and make clusters seem like rocket science are only charlatans wanting to waste your infrastructure budget.

I wrote this book for those people that aren't familiar with clustering, and want to get up to speed quickly and easily with Linux. I also included some reference material that I thought would save you time looking this information up on the web.

No, this is not the best book ever written. I'm a system administrator, not a English major. I've also got a sense of humor, and I've also tried to incorporate this into the book. I think it's a good read.

So all in all, if you're looking for fancy charts and complicated math formulas, then I suggest you stay away. If you'd like a cluster up with the least amount of fuss and the lack of stoicism, then yes, try my book.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Clustering Overview, September 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters (Paperback)

This book provides background information on system administration, clustering, and distributed computing. Only 3 or 4 of the 11 chapters are directly related to clusters and distributed computing networks. The majority of the book covers system administration tasks that are relevant in any setting. The clustering chapters do not provide adequate detail to evaluate the options available.

As an introduction to system administration the book is acceptable, but the overview of clustering is too cursory to justify the title. The book is also poorly copy-edited, with some of the acronymns expanded (sometimes amusingly) incorrectly.