Grid Computing with PCQLinux

PCQLinux 2006 comes with a grid-computing solution called JCGrid (Java Grid computing). It has three components-JCGrid server, worker and client. The server receives job requests from clients and forwards them to the worker. The worker processes the requests. The client splits the jobs into multiple requests.

Setup

A minimum of three machines running PCQLinux 2006 is needed for setting up a grid-one will run the JCGrid Server, the second will act as the worker and the third as your client. To set up the JCGrid, first set up your server machine. Boot the machine with the PCQLinux 2006 CD and select the 'Advanced Install>Grid Computing' install type. For installing the worker and client machines, you need to do the same thing as mentioned above. Now you need to configure the JCGrid. Connect all grid machines to the switch or hub (preferably switch) and assign them a fixed IP. For this discussion, we assign 192.168.3.78 to the Server, 192.168.3.79 to the worker and 192.168.3.80 to the client.

If you want to set up DHCP instead, open /etc/dhcpd.conf in a text editor and change the following entries :

ddns-update-style                                  

none;

default-lease-time                                   

21600;

max-lease-time                                      

21600;

option subnet-mask                                

255.255.255.0;

option broadcast-address                        

192.168.3.255;                                                                     

option option-128 code 128 = string;

option option-129 code 129 = text;

subnet  192.168.3.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { 

        range dynamic-bootp          

192.168.3.10 192.168.3.253;       

# <-- DHCP IP Ranage

       }

JCGrid client and it is currently using one server, two worker machine and one client machine.

Save this file and issue the command 'service dhcpd restart” This will start the DHCP server on the Grid Computing server. The grid setup also includes grid enabled PoVRay (Persistence of Vision Raytracer). This is installed by default when you select this option. It is used as the example in this article.

Configuring JCGrid Server 

Go to the server machine and open a terminal window in the GUI and issue the following commands.

# services iptables stop

# cd /opt/jcgrid-server

# sh povray-server-go.sh&

This starts JCGrid Server as a background process. In case of an error, check the error messages, and then check jcgrid-server.log in /opt/jcgrid-server directory to understand what went wrong.

Configuring JCGrid Worker 

Open a terminal window from the GUI, change directory to /opt/jcgrid-worker and open povray-worker-go.sh file in a text editor. Here, set the variable JCGRID_SERVER_NAME with the IP address of the JCGrid Server (in our case the IP was 192.168.3.78). Now, set the variable JCGRID_WORKER_NAME with a unique name (Note: you can't have multiple workers with the same name). Save this file and execute the script as mentioned below.

# services iptables stop

#cd /opt/jcgrid-worker

# sh povray-worker-go.sh&

Configuring JCGrid Client

Open a terminal window in the Client machine, go to /opt/jcgrid-client directory and open 'povray-client-go.sh' file in a text editor. Set the variable JCGRID_SERVER_NAME with the IP address of the JCGrid Server and also set the variable JCGRID_CLIENT_NAME with a unique name. Save this file and execute the command '# services iptables stop'.

With this your grid computing setup is ready to process the jobs.

Running jobs on the grid from the Client

To run jobs, from the client machine, open a terminal window and go to /opt/jcgrid-client directory. Here, you can test the grid setup with the demo PoVRay graphics files. To run the test job, execute '# sh povray-guiclient.go.sh'. This will open three GUI interfaces JCGrid Client, JCGrid Server Settings and Rendering setting. JCGrid client will show the output of the running rendering process. The JCGrid server setting window will be used to configure the JCGrid server settings and rendering setting interface is used to run the rendering process.

Now on the JCGrid Server setting set the IP address of the machine running 'povray-server'. Then come to Rendering settings window and in “Working directory “ text box, select the povray graphics files that you want to render on the JCGrid cluster.

Now, keeping the rest of the settings as default, click on Start button to start the rendering process.

On the JCGrid client interface you will see the image being rendered slowly, as you connect more worker nodes in the cluster the rendering process will become faster.

Source: PCQuest