Hi folks! i'm a newbie in this forum and at the moment i'm trying to make a cluster computer(in a virtual environment) with using any linus distro on vmware workstation. did anyone ever try it?
please give me a tutorial how to make it because i can't find any solution on the internet.
i really need this for my undergraduate project. regards'.

Its called "cluster in a box" and I'm sure there a several guides out there. The only difference in the process from a physical configuration is creating the shared disk, it needs to be on separate virtual controller ( 1:0 ) and it needs to be in "shared" mode, I can't remember the exact terminology used in Workstation.

The initial cluster vm setup process shouldn't be much different between Windows and Linux so you could probably use this as a rough guide.

@ kbp : thanks for your reply. i read it and i found that it needs Virtual SCSI Adapter. What is it? Is it some kind of program? If it's a program, where can i download it? thanks in advance

No .. its part of Workstation. When you add a scsi disk to a VMware virtual machine it asks you for the address in the form 'X:X'. The first 'X' indicates the adapter number that will be used and the second indicates the scsi id for the device. By adding a scsi disk using '1:0' for example, an extra scsi controller will be added to the virtual machine as well as a scsi disk with id 0.

@ kbp : oww. i see. have you ever tried it before? i'm confused of minimum system requirements when i need to set up a 6 nodes cluster in a box. currently, i'm using Intel Core 2 CPU 6420 @ 2,13 Ghz and 3Gb RAM. Is it enough?

Yes, I've done it before a few times. Really? .. a 6 node cluster in a box ? .. what exactly are trying to achieve? As far as proof of concept goes, using only 2 cluster nodes should be sufficient.

originally i just want to do this with 3 nodes but my lecturer wants to see the speed difference between when i use 3 nodes in a cluster and i use 6 nodes in a cluster.
i have no choice but to follow his word. i want to graduate this year

now i have installed the VMWare ESX/ESXi4 onto my VMWare Workstation 8. I have set the ip address of it into 192.168.0.1 , subnet mask 255.255.255.0 , def gateway 192.168.0.254. And now i'm getting confused of the setting for DNS Configuration. what should i put into Primary Server column and Alternate Server column? do you have an opinion? i'm sorry for this silly question but i am really trying hard to make it. hehe

I'm getting confused... are you replacing your host OS with ESXi? I can tell you now that 6 virtual machines on a pc with the specs you mentioned will run like a dog. You're cutting it really fine with the ram and the I'm assuming it's a standard hard disk.

As far as telling you what network settings to use, I can't - your teacher should be able to provide that information.

no, i'm not trying to replace my host OS. But it says in the link that u gave me that i have to connect my VI Client to the ESX host so it means that i have to install ESX, isn't it?
Than for that matter, i have installed ESX into my worktation. Have i done it wrong?

I said to follow it as a rough guide not exactly, the only part you needed was the virtual machine configuration and adding the shared disk.

ooooww. i get what you meant now. okay. now i'm trying to make it again.
can i still contact you for further information about this if i'm having another problem?

Sure, PM if you prefer