Rating: 
Summary: Amazing learning experience
Review: Most of the O'Reilly books I have looked at don't read as well as this one does. I am at working building a super computer now. While the author is involved in stock market work I don't find him condesending or snobby or like he doesn't have time for me. He tells the straight story of how to build a super computer with all the practical details you could want. I read it from the school library first and thought I wouldn't buy it myself but I have and now am really enjoying reading it. I am learning all kinds of things in the process.
Rating: 
Summary: Old
Review: Much of the information in this book is out of date. In addition, because of the time sensitive nature of hardware environments, Most of the discussion about hardware is mute as well. Too much of this book covers information that anyone serious about building a cluster would already know before they picked it up. By now the 6.2 version of Red Hat Linux is old and not likely to be a good starting point for any installation. This book needs more networking configuration discussion. It might look like the only book out there but, try the web for more up to date resources.
Rating: 
Summary: Perhaps a good Intro
Review: The beginning of this book is a great introduction to clustering of various types but slowly declinced in usefulness the further I read. Let me back up a step or two.. My work wanted me to build a Beowulf cluster to have on hand for a possible product down the line. At the time this book was not available so I resorted to reading all I could online in the form of FAQ's, HOW-TO's and general information sites. They were very informative and gave me a good base and reference when it came to building the cluster. While I was building the cluster, I finally received this book and was rather disappointed. The beginning was great, but the chapters regarding software to run the cluster were terrible. Too many pages were spent talking about cluster administration using -one- software package and installation instructions were too rudimentary. I figure, if you don't know how to install RedHat, you shouldn't be building a Beowulf cluster. There was also very little info about creating applications for the cluster. The book -is- titled Building Linux Clusters, but what good is a cluster without any software to run on it. I guess I make it sound worse than it really is but the previous reviews make it sound better than it is. It's a great introduction to Beowulf clusters but coming from someone that built one, read as much as you can about clusters online, read this book, then just build one from the ground up. Don't use the included software the first time around. It may be a pain to setup at first, but once it works and comes time to building applications or using it for something useful, you'll be glad.
Rating:
Summary: Good cluster overview - bad installation instructions
Review: This book describes a good overview of what a cluster is and how it operates, but the installation instructions were horrible, directories on CDROM were different than stated in the text, files were located in the wrong directories, kernel had to be modified to use network card, etc. Didn't anyone try to build a cluster using this text before it went to print? I'll keep looking for another book on clustering.
Rating: 
Summary: About building your first Beowuff type cluster
Review: This is an excellent first book about building a Beowuff type cluster. The book is not meant to be a primer on parallel computing, networking or computer architecture. However, the reader is introduced to all the necessary concepts for connecting COTS parts into a useful computing entity. Like so many other "How-To-Do" books tackling complex projects, it must rely on other sources of information to fill in the gaps -- it is like a good roadmap that will not indicate each individual pothole but will point out the Grand Canyon and other necessary sights. This focus produces a crisp reading book. The author introduces a large range of useful tools and packages that will aid in the care and feeding of the cluster. Unfortunately, my personal preference when introduced to a single tool for a particular problem (and knowing that in this field that there are numerous tools written to address the same problem), I wish to know more about the introducer -- after all, who is this person to say that this is the best tool for the problem? I can't help but feel that the author has held one or two significant positions, contributed to magazines or conferences in this field, or at least contributed to the Usenet news groups (and of which nothing of the sort is alluded to on the back of the book). But, this personal feeling of incompleteness is nothing compared to the usefulness of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Software bundle is terrible
Review: This is my first attempt at building a cluster, so I bought this book. The book has the potential to be a great starter book, but the text is so poorly edited, it makes for a tough read. Another problem, is that nothing in the installation seems to work exactly as it is supposed to. I take one step, debug, fix. Take another step, debug, fix, etc. Not being a Redhat fan (I use slackware), it is very frustrating to try and fix these problems. I am still trying to get my cluster to run, so can't comment on the rest of the book, but after reading the errata on O'Reilly's web site, it appears there are more software problems awaiting me down the road. The reason I bought this book, instead of just reading HOWTO's, FAQ's, website's, etc. was to have a smoother entry in cluster building, but I am not seeing that benefit with this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Building Linux Clusters
Review: This is my first attempt at building a cluster, so I bought this book. The book has the potential to be a great starter book, but the text is so poorly edited, it makes for a tough read. Another problem, is that nothing in the installation seems to work exactly as it is supposed to. I take one step, debug, fix. Take another step, debug, fix, etc. Not being a Redhat fan (I use slackware), it is very frustrating to try and fix these problems. I am still trying to get my cluster to run, so can't comment on the rest of the book, but after reading the errata on O'Reilly's web site, it appears there are more software problems awaiting me down the road. The reason I bought this book, instead of just reading HOWTO's, FAQ's, website's, etc. was to have a smoother entry in cluster building, but I am not seeing that benefit with this book.
Rating:
Summary: The Author Responds
Review: While I can sympathize with some readers who may have been expecting a different book that covered the topic of cluster building in a different way, I would like to respond with several facts to clarify issues surrounding "Building Linux Clusters": 1) The book, as published, is not the final draft given to the editors at O'Reilly. When the book was ready to be put into O'Reilly's publishing system the then-editor of this series left to pursue a career at VALinux; the copy of the book put into the system is missing was over 2 months old and missing 50-100 pages of changes/additions/updates and other corrections that are not reflected in the printed book. This was discovered by me only when the book was delivered to stores -- at which time (obviously) it was too late to do anything about it. 2) Despite the issues surrounding which version of the book went into production, the book sold over 10,000 copies out of a printing of 12,000: O'Reilly decided not to issue a 2nd edition for a number of reasons, including the fact that many of the facilities I documented in the book (such as MPI, PVM and tools for cluster management, parallel rendering, etc.) were subsequently available pre-installed in many major Linux distributions which obviated the need for a dedicated book on cluster building. 3) Many, many readers have had great success with the book and have written to tell me so, including several readers who were able to build 100+ node clusters in a matters of a few hours using the software provided with the book. 4) A large number of software-related problems experienced by readers came about as readers attempted to build new distributions (RedHat7, RedHat8, etc.) based on the original software (based on RedHat6.2) provided with the book. Where possible I proved many hundred of hours of assistance to such readers. 5) Updated software and other tools were made available both at O'Reilly's web site as well as my own to help readers who found that certain tools would not work on their configurations and have been downloaded and successfully used thousands of times.
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