List of Linux Filesystems, Clustered Filesystems, Performance Compute Clusters and Related Links

Links to sites covering Linux clustered file systems and Linux computing clusters. There are plenty of open source and commercial clustering solutions supporting Linux so that it will scale to supercomputer levels of computing and storage throughput.

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• Journaling the Linux ext2fs filesystem (postscript: ps.gz) - by Stephen C. Tweedie
• EXT3 - Stephen Tweedie's journalling version of the ext2
• Reiser FS - [Howto]
• SGI XFS - Note: SGI also released CXFS (Clustered XFS - commercial product.)
  • XFS-HOWTO
  • IBM Developerworks: Deploying XFS
• IBM JFS:
  • IBM JFS - IBM Linux/JFS site
  • JFS Features - by Jeanne Murray
• StegFS: Steganographic File System for Linux - encrypt data, hides data such that it cannot be proven to be there.
• Transparent Cryptographic Filesystem Project
• VERITAS:
  • VERITAS Cluster Server
  • VERITAS: Filesystem Whitepaper - (pdf) - Veritas VxVM is a commercial filesystem product
  • Veritas Linux performance claims
• Legato - Commercial Storage Area Network (SAN) Software/Hardware
• LinLogFS -- A Log-Structured Filesystem For Linux

Clustered Filesystems:

• SGI CXFS shared SAN network (fibre channel) clustered file system - Multi OS (Linux, Solaris, IRIX, MS/Windows NT all at the same time connected to the same SAN) 2Gbs Brocade SAN fabric storage. Also see SGI TP9500 fibre RAID storage array
• Tivoli SANergy - Multi OS (Linux, Windows, Solaris, IRIX, AIX) fibre channel SAN clustered file system. [Readme]
• Coda File System - Advanced networked filesystem.
• Global File System (GFS)
• GlobalFileSystem.org: GFS
• Sistina.com: Global File System (GFS) - Clustering software for Linux - Used by Oracle for their 9i cluster.
• TerraScale.com - Commercial Clustered Storage. TerraGrid global parallel cluster file systems. (Also TGMon performance monitor, HA and Terrascale hardware storage bricks.)
• Ibrix.com: Fusion - Commercial software based global scalable file system
• Clemson.edu: Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS) - This unique file system clusters the drives of many nodes as opposed to the typical many nodes connected to a single SAN.
  • Dell Computer: PVFS cluster study and statistics
• IBM: GPFS
• Inter-Mezzo.org: Distributed file system with a focus on high availability

Logical Volume Manager (LVM):

• Sistina: Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM) - Commercial

Overview of all Linux clustering.

• The Beowulf Project
  • Beowulf-Underground.org
• Veritas Clustering and Replication - Commercial products
• SGI ACE: Advanced Cluster Environment - Includes CXFS - Commercial product
• Scyld Computing Corporation - Commercial Beowulf OS
• Paralogic: HPCC cluster system software - Beowulf distribution
• MSC Linux distro for Beowulf
• Emulex Giganet cLAN IP Storage clustering
• TurboLinux: Cluster Server
• MOSIX.org - Scalable Cluster Computing
  • QPS - Process monitoring tool for Linux. Handles MOSIX clusters. I love this tool!!
• Cplant - Sandia
• OpenAFS.org - Share files and resources across local and wide area networks
  • IBM: Open AFS
  • Kerberos with AFS
• OSC Cluster Focus Group - Cluster tools
• Myricom: Myrinet - scalable cluster interconnect (Commercial) (Software: GM)
• Portland Group: Cluster development kit - compilers and tools
• U of Wisconsin: Condor - High Throughput Computing (HTC) - distributed computing
• Polyserve: Matrix/Matrix HA - Commercial clustering software solution for high availablity and load balancing.
• Compaq: Single System Image Clusters for Linux
• BPROC - Beowulf Distributed Process Space
• Cluster links

ClusteringTools:

• OSCAR - [sourceforge] - Installation, configuration, management, programming, and using clusters.
• SCALI.com: Manage: Enterprise Cluster management solution (Installation, sys admin, monitoring, workload management alarms and events, accounting, heterogeneous, hardware management, central point management.)

Scheduling:

• Platform.com: LSF - Workload management and load sharing.
• OpenPBS.org: Portable Batch System (PBS)
• Maui Scheduler - [alt]

Message Passing Interface (MPI): Programmers API for software to coordinate tasks access multiple nodes.

• Open-MPI.org - MPI-2 compliant. (Compined FT-MPI, LA-MPI, LAM/MPI, and PACX-MPI)
• MPI Standard
• MPICH-A Portable Implementation of MPI - Standard for message-passing libraries
• LAMMPI - TCP/IP only
• MPIPro (Commercial) Thread-friendly MPI
• MPI-IO: ROMIO
• Scali MPI Connect

IPC Communication Libraries:

• PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine):
  • PVM Home
  • Setting up a linux cluster using PVM
• TIPC: Transparent Inter Process Communication: intra cluster IPC. High speed fault tolerant and redundant synchronous sockets and asynchronous network communication.
• UPC: Berkeley Unified Parallel C - C language extension. Uniform programming model for both shared and distributed memory hardware. Programmer is presented with a single shared Partitioned Global Address Space (PGAS) where variables may be read and written by any processor (SPMD: Single Program, Multiple Data).
• Titanium: UC Berkeley developed Java "dialect" to support massively parallel supercomputers and distributed memory clusters.
• Co-Array FORTRAN: Extensions to FORTRAN 95 for shared and distributed memory computers and clusters. (to be added to FORTRAN standard)
• OpenMP.org: Older cross platform API which supports shared memory and parallel programming in C/C++ and FORTRAN for NUMA and SMP Multi-Processing (MP) systems.

Linux Journal: A High-Availability Cluster for Linux - by Phil Lewis June 29, 1999

• SGI: Linux Failsafe High-Availability (HA)
• Linux-HA.org: High-Availability Linux Project - [Getting Started Guide]
• LinuxVirtualServer.org - cluster, load balancing
• Red Hat Piranha: HA Load-balanced Web and FTP Clusters
• LinuxVirtualServer.org - Load balancing cluster
  • Red Hat: Linux Virtual Server (LVS) Cluster Configuration HOWTO
• FAKE: IP Address Takeover Tool - HA Switch to backup servers on a LAN for both unscheduled and scheduled down time. Fake allows you to take over the IP address of another machine using ARP spoofing.
• failoverd - Provide rudimentary HA failover capability for Linux
• MissionCriticalLinux.com: Covolo - Convolo Cluster (Commercial product): Twin systems sharing a centralized storage system (i.e. EMC Clariion) Also can provide for NFS and Samba failover.
• Compaq: Cluser Infrastructure for Linux
• SteelEye.com - enterprise-grade, low cost, high availability clustering, data replication and disaster recovery software.
• H.A. Technical Solutions - High availablility, data replication and load balancing software products.
• MetiLinx - Linux Failover
• ConstantData.com: High availability storage replication and failover
• UltraMonkey.org - Load balancing, high availability

• Project MegaGrind: Best Practices for Grid Computing
  • Oracle: MegaGrid - Database grid
  • EMC: MegaGrid - Storage grid

• Myrinet - High speed low latency interconnection. Switch interconnect.
• Dolphin Interconnect - Ring topology. Also 2D and 3D topologies. Traffic shared on ring. If one node goes out, the ring is broken and communications stop.
• Quadrics - European vendor. Switched network. Premium high speed.

Infiniband:

• Sourceforge: Infiniband
• Infiniband Trade Asscociation
• Vendors:
  • Voltaire
  • InfiniCon Systems
  • Mellanox
  • Topspin

High Performance / Low latency Gigabit Ethernet (GE):

• Ammasso - Uses Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA). Hardware and software solution.
• Level5 - EtherFabric hardware and software solution.
• Precision IO - Software

Latency Comparison:

Hardware	Latency (microseconds)	Bandwidth
Quadrics	3	800 Mb/s (Elan 4)
Myrinet	6	800 Mb/s (Rev E)
Infiniband 4X (MPI driver)	6	1.8 Gb/s (10 Gb/s Voltaire)
Level 5 Networks (Low latency GE NIC/driver)	7 end to end MPI 13 with switch 9 TCP end to end
Ammasso (RDMA)	16 end to end
Standard Ethernet (GE) TCP/IP	65 MPICH over TCP/IP 80-100 TCP/IP	60 - 80 Mb/s

Source: Foundry Networks 2004

Network monitoring:

• sFlow.org
• InMon - Internet Monitoring for high speed switched networks.
  sFlow tools

• IBM Beowulf presentation - (pdf) - Dan Owensly
• MSC Beowulf cluster at USC - 06/29/02 - Real Video
• OpenClusterGroup.org
• SuperComp.org - Supercomputing technical conference papers
  • SC2000
  • SC2001
  • SC2002
• Clustering Foundry
• Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
• Devfs - by Jorgen Tysnes
• IBM Redbook on Linux HPC Cluster Installation
• Clusters.Top500.org
• ExtremeLinux.org
• Clemson: PARL - Parallel Architecture Research Lab
• HPTI.com - High Performance Technologies
• LinuxNetworx.com
• User Groups:
  • Baltimore-Washington Beowulf User Group

Books:

	"How to Build a Beowulf: A Guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters" by Thomas L. Sterling, John Salmon, Donald J. Becker, Savarese, Daniel F. Savarese ISBN #026269218X, MIT Press
	"Linux Cluster Architecture" by Alex Vremios ISBN #0672323680, Sams 1st edition
	"Building Linux Clusters" (and CD) by David H. M. Spector, Mark Stone O'Reilly and Associates ISBN #1565926250
	"Server Load Balancing" by Tony Bourke O'Reilly and Associates ISBN #0596000502
	"In Search of Clusters" by Gregory F. Pfister ISBN #0138997098, Prentice Hall PTR Theory and concepts.
	"Blueprints for High Availability" by Evan Marcus, Hal Stem ISBN #0471430269, Wiley

Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007 by Greg Ippolito