The Manjra Cluster

(manjra.cs.mu.oz.au)

Overview

manjra is a cluster that comprises of 1 master node & 13 worker nodes:

  • The master node connects the cluster to the rest of the world and is used to manage the cluster, and compile and run jobs.
  • The worker nodes are used to provide the computational power for the cluster.
  • Overall, the cluster includes 15 processors, 7 GB of memory and 770 GB of storage.

Purpose

The primary purpose of manjra cluster is to facilitate the research conducted by the Grid Computing and Distributed Systems (GRIDS) Lab in the design and development of next-generation computing systems and applications that aggregate or lease services of distributed resources depending on their availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality-of-service requirements.

The GRIDS Lab shares this cluster with staff members of our department in the university and also with our national and international collaborators.

The manjra cluster also serves as one of the nodes of our World-Wide Grid (WWG ) testbed.

For more information:

Master Node

The master node consists of the following:

  • Dual Xeon 2GHz
  • 512 MB memory
  • 250 GB integrated storage
  • Gigabit LAN
  • CDROM & Floppy Drives
  • Red Hat Linux release 7.3 (Valhalla)

Worker Nodes

Each of the 13 worker node consists of the following:

  • Pentium 4 2GHz
  • 512 MB memory
  • 40 GB harddisk
  • Gigabit LAN
  • Red Hat Linux release 7.3 (Valhalla)

Miscellaneous

In addition to the head node and worker nodes, the manjra cluster also includes the following:

  • 1 x 16 Port Gigabit LAN Switch (Dlink DGS-1016T)
  • 1 x 19" Rack Unit
  • 1 x 16 KVM Ports & Cables to connect to all 14 computers and attach to 17" Monitor, Keyboard & Mouse
  • 1 x 17" Ipex Monitor
  • 1 x Ipex Keyboard
  • 1 x Ipex Mouse
  • 14 x Ethernet Cables

The basic cluster hardware and software was supplied and installed by Ipex Information Technology Group .

The financial assistance from the department of CSSE, Melbourne University, and contribution of Ipex is gratefully acknowledged.

For further information about manjra, you may contact Rajkumar Buyya

PS: The name "manjra" is inspired from one of the principal tributaries of Godavari called "manjra" river , which happens to flow between Raj's house and his (parents) farming field in his village (Koutha) in India. In addition, this name also survived expectations of our technical staff since it was in tune with their naming scheme for department servers!