Implementation of a Diskless Cluster Computing Environment in a Computer Classroom

The objective of this paper is to implement and evaluate a cluster computing environment by clustering idle PCs (personal computer) with Diskless slave nodes on campuses in order to obtain the effectiveness of the largest computer potency. Two sets of cluster platforms BCCD and DRBL are used to compare parallel computing performance. The objective is to prove that DRBL has better performance than BCCD in this experiment. In order to achieve the objective of a platform for Free Software Teaching, DRBL is applied to the computer classroom, enabling PCs to be manually or automatically switched among different OS (operating system) of Windows, Free Software Teaching and PC Cluster. The bioinformatics program, mpiBLAST, is executed smoothly in the Cluster architecture as well. Through comparing various aspects of performance, including performance of Switch, Swap, this paper is attempted to find out the best Cluster environment in computer classroom at school. Finally, HPCC is used to demonstrate Cluster performance.