Setting Up a High Performance Computing Cluster: A Case Study at the University of Craiova

The term grid computing originated in the early 1990s as a metaphor for making computer power as easy to access as an electric power grid. The first definition of grid computing was that “A computational grid is a hardware and software infrastructure that provides dependable, consistent, pervasive, and inexpensive access to high-end computational capabilities.” Grid computing is today applied in a variety of application domains. Grid architectures are very much used in executing applications that require a large number of resources and the processing of a significant amount of data. This paper focuses on the HPC cluster installed at University of Craiova (CeGO) describing various aspects related to the hardware architecture, network infrastructure, basic system services, cluster middleware, and administration applications. Key-Words: grid computing, high performance computing cluster