24 lines
1.2 KiB
Text
24 lines
1.2 KiB
Text
In administrating a large scale PC cluster, installation and updating
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both of kernel and utility software to whole the system are very
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troublesome, especially if the numbers of PC exceeds a hundred. In
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installation, people usually make dead copies of a hard disk image
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in which software systems are previously installed and then they
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are distributed among node PCs by CDs or hard disk themselves.
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Though some software do such a process through networks, they
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commonly have an performance bottleneck at server where the original
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image are hold.
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A cloning program `dolly' developed in ETH(Swiss Federal Institute
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of Technology) avoids such bottleneck by using a "ring" type
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connection rather than 'hub' type connection among one server and
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many clients .
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I have extended its concept with multi-threading and pipeline
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technique. It speeds up installation process very much. One-to-ten
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copying, for example, finishes in almost same minutes for one-to-one
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copy. In addition, time out sensing 'bypass' mechanism makes the
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copy process pretty robust in the case of a client machine trouble.
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Author: Atsushi Manabe <manabe@corvus.kek.jp>
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WWW: http://corvus.kek.jp/~manabe/pcf/dolly/
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