Headless/diskless WCG.. is it possible?

[Hymay]

So I was browsing about on other forums.. and drifting through the F@H forums mainly.. reading about farms.. and came across the fact that many of them are run completely headless.. and diskless on the nodes.
I was wondering if this is even possible with WCG.. to run an entire farm off a single network drive.

Was also thinking about mass cooling solutions and hoping bob or anyone else could point me in a good direction to research those. Cost effective parts to get.. what you have to buy vs what can be bubblegum/bailing wired etc. Just how many nodes can you cool off a large radiator... you know.. start me from idocy on up :rolleyes:

[sierra_bound]

You can run headless if you use a program like BoincView (http://boincview.amanheis.de/).

Running diskless involves creating a server configuration. There's a program called Tftpd32 (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/Tftpd32.html). I've never used it. But you have to do a few things, including reconfiguring your router.

[123bob]

I would say Fallwind/Olympic is the best headless cruncher we have around, as far as I know. I have come to rely on Boincview myself, but have not removed the $3, ebay, pci vid cards I have in the machines

For water cooling, check this (http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/showthread.php?t=155220&highlight=mass+water+cooler) out. Realize it is old from the standpoint of the size of my current farm, but it is still chunking along, with zero problems.

[MuffinFlavored]

If I ever had money and were going to dedicate it to systems for WCG-Boinc, I would have every system the same.

No case
Q6600
D-Tek Fuzion
Some P35 motherboard
4GB DDR2-800
XP 64-bit (I heard that 64-bit makes a large difference? Does it?)

Each on a special tray that acts as a motheboard tray with stand offs, all linked via tubing, and on another tray, pumps, and on another tray MCR-320s.

I wonder how it would go.

As far as diskless operation, would you lose cycles due to all the transferring, or now?

[fallwind]

Headless is no problem, heck you don't even need a video card since most boards will boot without one. Diskless gets complicated. I'd recommend just getting some old IDE HD's to use. Anything over 5GB should do. You can pick them up on eBay for a few bucks.

Check out the thread on my farm for some ideas: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=165156 Water cooling is expensive no matter how you look at it. You could do the same thing with air cooling, you'd just have to beef up the airflow in and out of the the case.

[sierra_bound]

Here are instructions for running diskless:

http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/diskless.html

Essentially the software allows you to create a TFTP/DHCP server on a local computer.

As I mentioned earlier, I have not used this program. Spending money on HDD's is not huge concern for me. I can pick up a new 80GB drive for crunching for $40-45. I still remember back when a HDD with that capacity cost a small fortune. Yeah, the good 'ol days.

[Movieman]

Here are instructions for running diskless:

http://reilly.homeip.net/folding/diskless.html

Essentially the software allows you to create a TFTP/DHCP server on a local computer.

As I mentioned earlier, I have not used this program. Spending money on HDD's is not huge concern for me. I can pick up a new 80GB drive for crunching for $40-45. I still remember back when a HDD with that capacity cost a small fortune. Yeah, the good 'ol days.

agreed, $40.00 for a drive that should last at least 2 years is cheap..
I remember paying $175.00 for a 4.3 gig WD and that was at a PC trade show where items were cheap..
Still got this sweet 850MB WD drive in a drawer.. WD Cavier.. Yea, 850MB:ROTF:

[karl_eller]

Another way to run them headless is by using Remote Access. I've got a couple of Ubuntu machines running minus the monitor (and keyboard/mouse), and when I need to check up on them, I just use something like UltraVNC Viewer from my main Vista rig, and remote desktop into the 'buntu machines. It'd be pretty easy to set the same thing up with XP or Vista Business/Ultimate.

Eller

[xoqolatl]

I never tried it, but you can run OS from CompactFlash card through CF->IDE adapter. I dont know if it's cheaper, but definitely more silent, smaller and uses less power.

[fart_plume]

most newer computers you can install the os to a thumbdrive, even my nforce 3 board will do this. a 4gb thumbdrive plugged into the usb port closest to the mobo and ps2 ports and your good to go.

[SiGfever]

agreed, $40.00 for a drive that should last at least 2 years is cheap..
I remember paying $175.00 for a 4.3 gig WD and that was at a PC trade show where items were cheap..
Still got this sweet 850MB WD drive in a drawer.. WD Cavier.. Yea, 850MB:ROTF:

My first hard drive was a WD 30mb RLL which required a separate card to run it, the drive was $300 and the card was $175. As S_B said, "The good old days". :) Oh, it went into an Epson Equity 1 which had 256k memory, a real screamer. :rofl:

[Martijn]

I run all of my crunchers headless. I manage them with BoincView and if something does go wrong there's always Remote Desktop. Works flawlessly. I wouldn't try diskless crunching, although flash drives might work.

[jspace]

I've been experimenting with diskless nodes off and on for a while now. Let me tell you, it's not easy, and even harder with a Windows based server. The hardest part for me is getting the kernel images or BartPE to freakin' work. To start, what you need is:
Host to run various apps and actually interface with.
2x NICs makes it easier (host becomes router)
TFTP server
DHCP server
linux kernel images (or WinPXE images)
switch/hub
PXE/BOOTP compatible NIC for each node. Most mobos have this onboard already, it just needs to be enabled. Otherwise, a NIC with a compatible bootrom is needed; or, worse case scenario, break out the floppy disks and check out www.etherboot.org.
So far, I haven't gotten anything more complex than memtest running.

Thanks SB, I'll check out that site you posted and see if I can get it to work.

[Hymay]

agreed, $40.00 for a drive that should last at least 2 years is cheap..
I remember paying $175.00 for a 4.3 gig WD and that was at a PC trade show where items were cheap..
Still got this sweet 850MB WD drive in a drawer.. WD Cavier.. Yea, 850MB:ROTF:

Thanks all for the info.... I haven't run out of drives quite yet, still have various ide's poking around. Not certain, but I know I have many sub 2gb ones in storage, as well as at least 2 systems in there! Whats funny was I looked inside them, to check things out.. always digging for spare parts. I think I might be able to use that cpu fan off my P200... it should be good to cool a chipset or something :D . Apparently I already stole the vid card out of it, but I am running thin on spare PCI vids.. my poor matrox doesn't seem to want to come back to life.

Anyway, the diskless idea is probably more a mental exercise in dreaming... ie.. dreaming I had a farm of 12+ machines or more that would actually benefit from saving the 25 watts per drive that was missing. Plus it helped with the clutter a little.

Now.. even more questions! More performance oriented this time..
If you have a machine with ample ram : IE 4gb+ would disabling the page file usage in boinc cause it to use more ram, or would it just take a nasty perfomance hit and use the same amt of ram?

Secondly.. does vista's Readyboost do anything at all for boinc? or does it only store crap for speeding up the opening of programs you have already run?
Basically, both Q's are geared toward trying to get boinc to use more info from faster sources than a hard drive. Trying to get as much efficiency as possible ;)

Was all a kind of mishmash of ideas running around in my head... running diskless.. getting boinc to use more ram, using flash ram, etc.

[[XC] riptide]

agreed, $40.00 for a drive that should last at least 2 years is cheap..
I remember paying $175.00 for a 4.3 gig WD and that was at a PC trade show where items were cheap..
Still got this sweet 850MB WD drive in a drawer.. WD Cavier.. Yea, 850MB:ROTF:

Yep. I have a load of 2gig drives around that I got as small parts of bigger 'salvage' operations. They actually still work. I also have my very first... a 454MB from a Packard Bell 486. The thing about these drives that sounds good today is when you power them up.... its like a Harrier JumpJet spooling up on the front lawn.

[Grafton]

i think the flash drive otiion would be the best/cheapest/least space/least power option, might give it a try have a 2gb flash drive, an old mobo cpu and power supply need to try out my 64bit copy of xp anyway :D

[rcofell]

Just wanted to say this has gotten me interested. I've read up a bit on PXE and network booting diskless linux systems through the pxelinux loader, and it doesn't look all that bad.

Yeah, basically what you'll need on the server side is a dhcp server setup for network boot requests, TFTP, and a file sharing service (most likely NFS in the case of linux). I won't try at all with windows, but I think linux shouldn't be too bad, since pxelinux actually allows you to customize kernel and rootFS based on IP/MAC address. A diskless operation might even be easier to manage, since all the files are on the server and you could just upgrade all the machines installations at once, after that you could just reboot the nodes. I wonder how much the network latency would affect the performance, but with the fact that boinc allows you to modify the write interval it could be mitigated. Setting up a ram drive might help too, but you'd have to worry about data loss in the event of unexpected shutdown then.

Sure, storage is incredibly cheap these days, but think of the fun building and maintaining an effective cluster would be :)