Teaching high-performance service in a cluster computing course

Abstract

[EN] Most courses on cluster computing in graduate and postgraduate studies are focused on parallel programming and high-performance/high-throughput computing. This is the typical usage of clusters in academia and research centres. However, nowadays, many companies are providing web, mail and, in general, Internet services using computer clusters. These services require a different ``cluster flavour'': high-performance service and high availability. Despite the fact that computer clusters for each environment demand a different configuration, most university cluster computing courses keep focusing only on high-performance computing, ignoring other possibilities. In this paper, we propose several teaching strategies for a course on cluster computing that could fill this gap. The content developed here would be taught as a part of the course. The subject shows several strategies about how to configure, test and evaluate a high-availability/load-balanced Internet server. A virtualization-based platform is used to build a cluster prototype, using Linux as its operating system. Evaluation of the course shows that students knowledge and skills on the subject are improved at the end of the course. On the other hand, regarding the teaching methodology, the results obtained in the yearly survey of the University confirm student satisfaction.