On a course on computer cluster configuration and administration

Abstract

Computer clusters are today a cost-effective way of providing either highperformance and/or high-availability. The flexibility of their configuration aims to fit the needs of multiple environments, from small servers to SME and large Internet servers. For these reasons, their usage has expanded not only in academia but also in many companies. However, each environment needs a different "cluster flavour". High-performance and high-throughput computing are required in universities and research centres while high-performance service and high-availability are usually reserved to use in companies. Despite this fact, most university cluster computing courses continue to cover only high-performance computing, usually ignoring other possibilities. In

Teaching high-performance service in a cluster computing course

“…In this paper, we propose a master course on cluster configuration and administration, that tries to fill this gap. It is the updated version of the previous course presented in [22] that has been taught for several years. In this edition, the topics about HPS-HA have been updated and extended.…”

“…This section summarizes the lecture topics. A more detailed explanation can be found in [22]. Comparing the subject proposed in this paper with that course, the content about parallel programming has been eliminated, since it is already developed in other courses.…”

“…This paper only deals with this latter part of the project. Please see details for operating system installation and system configuration in [22].…”

“…However, most cluster installations, especially Internet data centers, fit into these latter categories. In [22], we described the contents of a masterlevel cluster computing course that already addresses HPS/HA issues. In this paper, being aware of the growing importance of these kind of servers, we propose an updated version of the course with additional material on HPS/HA at the expense of sacrificing parallel programming topics, that can be taught in other subjects on programming.…”

“…As stated in [22], the use of virtualization environments allow students to build their own cluster on the computers of the lab or even on their own laptops. The computing power and memory available on current off-the-shelf computers are high enough to deploy a cluster composed of several virtual machines.…”