Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters

by Charles Bookman

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1578702747
• ISBN13: 9781578702749
• Release Date: December 2002
• Publisher: Sams Publishing
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

good setup advice

Contains much useful advice about the environmental needs of a cluster. Especially power and cooling. Plus it describes ancillary equipment like racks and switches. The latter are important, because without fast communication between the nodes in the cluster, performance will rapidly degrade. Bookman discusses the installation of linux on the nodes. Often, these will be Intel or AMD chips. A major point about having a linux cluster is minimising the cost of hardware, as well as using a free operating system. Hence the choice of the above CPUs. Note that the book does not really go into the programming of the cluster in any detail. That is, what type of code can you write that takes advantage of the computational power in the nodes and in their distributed nature? You'll need another text for this.

Consider the Alternatives.

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.

Linux Clustering - A palatable approach

The author mixes his knowledge and humor to make this advanced topic a very palatable read. The mental model the author has is very well layed out, from cover to cover. At the end of the day, it's a book that I would recommend everyone having as part of their reference library.