Book Image

Raspberry Pi Super Cluster

By : Andrew K. Dennis
Book Image

Raspberry Pi Super Cluster

By: Andrew K. Dennis

Overview of this book

A cluster is a type of parallel/distributed processing system which consists of a collection of interconnected stand-alone computers cooperatively working together. Using Raspberry Pi computers, you can build a two-node parallel computing cluster which enhances performance and availability. This practical, example-oriented guide will teach you how to set up the hardware and operating systems of multiple Raspberry Pi computers to create your own cluster. It will then navigate you through how to install the necessary software to write your own programs such as Hadoop and MPICH before moving on to cover topics such as MapReduce. Throughout this book, you will explore the technology with the help of practical examples and tutorials to help you learn quickly and efficiently. Starting from a pile of hardware, with this book, you will be guided through exciting tutorials that will help you turn your hardware into your own super-computing cluster. You'll start out by learning how to set up your Raspberry Pi cluster's hardware. Following this, you will be taken through how to install the operating system, and you will also be given a taste of what parallel computing is about. With your Raspberry Pi cluster successfully set up, you will then install software such as MPI and Hadoop. Having reviewed some examples and written some programs that explore these two technologies, you will then wrap up with some fun ancillary projects. Finally, you will be provided with useful links to help take your projects to the next step.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Raspberry Pi Super Cluster
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using an SD card as our Raspberry Pi's storage device


The Raspberry Pi comes equipped with a Secure Digital (SD) card port and to begin with we will run the operating system from an SD card. It is possible to use an USB hard drive as we discussed earlier, which are generally faster and in Chapter 7, Going Further we will discuss this in more detail. For the earlier chapters, however, the SD card is convenient as it is easy to quickly clone for multiple devices, takes up no extra desk space, and leaves the USB ports free for connecting a mouse and keyboard for debugging issue, if for example, you cannot login to the device via the network.

There is a range of SD cards available in the market in a variety of sizes. You will need to use an SD card of at least 2 GB.

You can find a guide to supported SD card brands and models at eLinux's Raspberry Pi Wiki:

http://elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards

It is also possible to purchase an SD card with a pre-installed operating system; however we recommend following...