Abstract
Since their beginning from a NASA project around 1994, Beowulf Clusters become one of the most important class of high performance computing systems. Although this platform has been widely used for several years, it is still difficult to build a large beowulf cluster. The reason is the lack of tools that allows people to effectively maintain the system and develop the applications. This problem significantly reduces the benefit gained from a beowulf systems. In this paper, the design of the next generation integrated environment for beowulf clusters called SCE (Scalable Cluster Environment) is presented. The goal of SCE project is to build a powerful, scalable, portable, and easy to use cluster environment. The paper discusses about the important issues in designing a good cluster environment and proposes the solution to these issues. SCE design has been used to demonstrate the ideas. Finally, the experimental results are presented to illustrated that while provides a flexible and portable environment, SCE can also provides a scalable, fast, and efficient cluster environment for users as well.