Clondike: LinuxCluster ofNon-Dedicated Workstations

Clusters ofworkstations areapromising platform for high-performance computing. Mostofsuchclusters are built ofdedicated workstations that cannotbeusedfor other purposes. Eventhough these clusters offer good price/performance ratio, their costs arenotnegligible. On theother hand, there exist manyidle workstations connected viacomputer networks. Theidea ofexploiting such idle resources isobvious. Inthis paper, wedescribe anarchitecture ofclusters madeofnon-dedicated idle workstations. These clusters aimatproviding asingle-system-image Linux environment. Themaininnovative feature isthat acluster administration isseparate fromadministration ofindividual workstations. Wediscuss issues ofsecurity, availability, performance, and administration ofsuchclusters. Wealso describe apilot implementation andgive promising experimental results.