APPLICATION OF HARDWARE ISSUES

Students were asked not only to take care of system administration but also to manage hardware.
The jobs that students handled were: hardware acquisition and replacement; space, heat, and
power management; and most importantly, network management.
Dealing with this process helped future system administrators develop system design skills. Students
also managed the location of shelving, machines, wires, and peripherals, all within the constraints
of the room available. Because of space constraints, cluster nodes were packed tightly
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together and students even went as far as developing a plan for proper cooling of all of the machines.
Networking is a unique problem with Beowulf clusters. It can be divided into two major, related
areas: cabling and topology. Cabling is a problem because the large number of wires and their
length constrains the space in which the cluster can be placed and limits signal quality. Topology
is a consideration because of its effect on performance. Each computer will use a power, mouse,
keyboard, video and potentially multiple network cables. It is difficult to service a cluster when
there is a cascading mess of wires covering everything on the cluster's backside. The cables
quickly become unmanageable if a coherent labeling and bundling plan is not thought of ahead of
time. Another factor is cable cost. It is cheap and educational for students to create custom cables
from a box of cable parts and crimping tools.