Operating Systems for Parallel and Distributed Architectures / Operating Systems and Computer Architecture

Regarding the presentations

In the course Team on Microsoft Teams, under General -> Shared -> Class Materials, you will find the proposed presentation schedule and the available time slots, starting from week 7 of the semester. There are enough slots available for everyone to present, including some additional backup slots during the exam session. However, to avoid wasting available slots, please sign up for your presentation in advance. The deadline for choosing your presentation topic and reserving a time slot is the end of week 9 (November 29, 2026). To “gently” motivate you 😊, each week of delay will result in a 1-point deduction from the grade for this activity. Important: The schedule file is read-only, so you cannot edit it yourselves. To reserve a slot, please send me an email or a message on Teams specifying your preferred time slot and the title of your presentation. If your requested slot is no longer available, I will assign you the next available slot in the following weeks.

Homework #1

Homework 1: Install a virtualized cluster containing a head node and at least two compute nodes in a virtual environment such as Oracle Virtual Box. The virtual cluster should run ROCKS Cluster Distribution (recommended version 6.2). The number of compute nodes will depend on the available memory of your physical host. Deadline: Week 9 (November 23, 2026).

Information regarding the discipline

Name of the discipline:
Operating Systems for Parallel and Distributed Architectures (High Performance Computing and Big Data Analytics & Cloud and Network Infrastructure with High Performance Computing Master’s programmes)
Operating Systems and Computer Architecture (Artificial Intelligence for Connected Industries Master’s programme)

Course coordinator: Assoc. prof. Darius Bufnea, darius.bufnea at ubbcluj punct ro

Prerequisites

Curriculum: Operating Systems, Distributed Operating Systems, Computer Networks
Competencies: Average administration and programming skills

Objectives of the discipline

General objective of the discipline: Know the key concepts of parallel cluster architectures
Specific objective of the discipline: At the end of the course, students will know how to build, deploy, configure, maintain, monitor, debug a Linux parallel cluster.

Content

1. Introduction to Operating systems for parallel architectures
2. Parallel Cluster architecture: Cluster Head Nodes, Computer Nodes, Clustering Middleware
3. Parallel Cluster Paradigms: Single system image, Centralized system management, High processing capacity, Resource consolidation, Optimal use of resources, High-availability, Redundancy, Single points of failure, Failover protection and disaster recovery, Horizontal and vertical scalability, Load-balancing, Elasticity, Run jobs anytime, anywhere
4. Design and configuration. Network prerequisites for a parallel cluster: LAN, bandwidth, latency, interface, security aspects. Nodes automatic configuration and deployment
5. Virtualization of hardware, operating system, storage devices, computer network resources
6. Beowulf clusters deployment and administrations
7. Linux Cluster Distributions: Mosix, ClusterKnoppix. Automated operating systems and software provisioning for a Linux Cluster: Open Source Cluster Application Resources (OSCAR)
8. Cluster resources: distributed memory architecture and distributed shared memory, distributed file systems (examples: IBM General Parallel File System, Microsoft’s Cluster Shared Volumes, Oracle Cluster File System
9. Nodes and head node management, Cluster system management, Debugging and monitoring a parallel cluster, Node failure management
10. Data sharing and communication, Message passing and communication, Parallel processing libraries: Parallel Virtual Machine toolkit and the Message Passing Interface library
11. Software and development environment, Parallel application development and execution (Parallel Environment – PE), Job scheduling & management

Bibliography

1. Gregory Pfister: In Search of Clusters, Prentice Hall; 2^nd edition (December 22, 1997), ISBN-10: 0138997098, ISBN-13: 978-0138997090;
2. George F. Coulouris, Jean Dollimore, Tim Kindberg: Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design, Addison-Wesley; 5^th edition (May 7, 2011), ISBN-10: 0132143011, ISBN-13: 978-0132143011;
3. Joseph D. Sloan: High Performance Linux Clusters with OSCAR, Rocks, OpenMosix, and MPI, O’Reilly Media (November 23, 2004), ISBN-10: 0596005709, ISBN-13: 978-0596005702;
4. Daniel F. Savarese, Donald J. Becker, John Salmon, Thomas Sterling: How to Build a Beowulf: A Guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters, The MIT Press (May 28, 1999), ISBN-10: 026269218X, ISBN-13: 978-0262692182;
5. Gordon Bell, Thomas Sterling: Beowulf Cluster Computing with Linux, The MIT Press; 1^st edition (October 1, 2001), ISBN-10: 0262692740, ISBN-13: 978-0262692748;
6. Charles Bookman: Linux Clustering: Building and Maintaining Linux Clusters, Sams Publishing; 1^st edition (June 29, 2002), ISBN-10: 1578702747, ISBN-13: 978-1578702749.

Evaluation