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I'm looking for a way to quickly and easily build a compute cluster using cheap pcs (all identical hardware). Rocks looks like a possible solution, but I need to be able to run Python 3.4 programs on the nodes, and need to set up DISCO on the system as well. Is this possible to do with Rocks, or am I better off just setting up one cluster for DISCO stuff, and an entirely different one for traditional MPI based computing? Ease of set-up is a big concern here.

PTTHomps
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    I am actually working on a Rocks cluster myself that has the Sun Grid Engine installed. I have compiled and installed quite a lot of packages from source on that cluster. I looked up the installation of DISCO on the servers and it actually doesn't seem too bad. http://disco.readthedocs.org/en/latest/start/install.html#long-version. It only needs a few dependencies, some of which already come installed with the Rocks distro like ssh client and daemon. Rocks is a CentOS derivative, so Erlang should be installable through CentOS repo. – Sandman Jun 18 '15 at 19:33
  • Speaking of, do you even need Rocks? You could use any Linux distro that you already are comfortable with. Just use Ubuntu(for example) and just install DISCO on it. – Sandman Jun 18 '15 at 19:50
  • I could just do it manually, but I have no experience in setting up clusters, and limited IT support, so Rocks seems like a nice way to get set up quickly. I'd like to spend as little time creating the thing as possible. – PTTHomps Jun 18 '15 at 19:52
  • What do you think the Rocks distro is going to buy you additionally? – Sandman Jun 18 '15 at 19:56
  • well, I THINK that I'd get a guided process for setting up the cluster, as well as being able to use it for MPI based computing instead of just DISCO. Could be wrong, but it seems to have all the tools built in and ready to rock for cluster management, in which I have zero experience. I suppose I could be overestimating the extent of Rock's capabilities. – PTTHomps Jun 18 '15 at 20:04
  • That could be, but I think this could also mean more administration than you bargained for. I could be wrong, very wrong about this, since I speak from the POV of a Rocks+SGE user and not administrator. – Sandman Jun 18 '15 at 20:13

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