[Paraview] Multiple servers

[Rick Angelini]

You'll also want to make sure that you either give the full path to 
pvserver when you start the mpirun job, or make sure that pvserver is in 
your default path.

Will distributed processing help you?   That totally depends on the 
distribution of your dataset, speed of your network & processors, 
etc.    If you try to distribute a "small" dataset across multiple 
nodes, you may actually make things slower.   Same is true with 
distributed HW-based rendering.    The bottom line disclaimer: Your 
actual mileage may vary.

David Doria wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 6:34 PM, pat marion<pat.marion at kitware.com> wrote:
>   
>> Hi David,
>>
>> You'll want to change your mpirun command a little bit-
>>
>> on machine X: mpirun -np 3 -machinefile machinefile.txt pvserver
>>
>> This will run 3 instances of pvserver where each instance runs on one of the
>> machines specified in machinefile.txt.  Machinefile.txt will list the
>> machine hostnames, one per line.  You'll need to setup password-less ssh
>> from machine X to machines Y and Z, otherwise it will prompt you for a
>> password for each machine.
>>
>> Here's a link to a little test program you can try.  It will have each mpi
>> process print out its rank and hostname so that you can confirm that each
>> process really is running on its own machine-
>> http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/unix/farm/mpi.html
>>
>> Pat
>>
>>     
>
> Thanks Pat, I'll try that in the morning. Do I have to do anything on
> Y and Z to prepare them to be in the machinefile list (like somehow
> start mpi listening on them)? Also, if starting the pvserver from X,
> does X have to be in the machinefile list? Or is it included
> implicitly?
>
> I've read several opinions on openMPI vs mpich2, but has anyone tested
> these using paraview type benchmarks?
>
> Can anyone comment on whether or not setting up something like this
> will actually help? I am current using a pretty new P4 with 4gb ram
> and a decent video card - would switching to a group of 3 or 4 P3's
> with 2gb ram actually make a difference? Or would it actually be
> worse? Or can I also run an MPI pvserver on my machine so I can use
> A+X+Y+Z? If that is the case, is A smart enough not to send messages
> over the network and then back to itself (i.e. will it really be A + X
> + Y + Z (i.e. strictly better than just A), or will it be (A - a
> decent amount) + X + Y + Z?)
>
> I also have access to an 8 core SGI machine that has no video
> hardware. How much does the video card actually do in the rendering?
> Is 8 cores worse than a machine with one core and a good video card?
>
> Thanks,
>
> David
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