Triton Resource - Build Your Own Cluster

Procedure to Build Your Own Triton Cluster

The outline below provides general guidelines for the building and installation of a cluster like the Triton Resource. Triton is an example of a Rocks Cluster and uses CentOS (derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux) as its base Operating System. Complete instructions for building Rocks Clusters are available on the Rocks Web site. The information on this page supplements those instructions with details specific to installation of the Triton Resource.

If you would like more detailed information, or if you have questions on a particular part of this process, please join our discussion mailman list (triton-discuss@sdsc.edu) and we will correspond with you on this topic. The Triton Discussion list is a direct connection to the Triton system administrators.

How We Build and Install Triton_RC4

Installation of Front End Node

1. Create a CD with the Rocks 5.4 Kernel/Boot Roll on it; this can be obtained from the Rocks Maverick Download page.
2. Reboot the main node from this CD; at the boot prompt, type
   build <return>
3. Enter the name of your Roll Server at the prompt
   • To use the roll server capability, you will need to provide this service yourself. The rolls are available in compressed source file and disk image format from the Triton Downloads Page, or . . .
   • The Archive Section below has a list of downloadable rolls available for independent maintenance on a private Roll Server
4. Select all the desired rolls from the list on screen
5. Click the Next button
6. If the process fails at this point, there could be an error in one or more of the selected rolls; in this case, you would need to identify the rolls by process of elimination, repair the rolls so the roll server has a working version, and rerun the roll selection process.

Installation of Management, Compute, and Login Node(s)

Login and compute nodes are installed normally, as described in the Rocks 5.4 Base Roll Users Guide [external]. The login node is an extension of the standard Rocks installation. This component is useful on Triton to separate the multitude of users preparing, starting, and monitoring jobs from the compute nodes and the management node, which supports user logins on a typical Rocks system.

Archive Files

The following archives are available for download as part of the Build Your Own Triton Cluster procedure. These rolls are available for the TRITON_RC4 release as of August 18, 2011. Rolls for RC3 are available from the RC3 Downloads page. Previous Triton release rolls are no longer available.