1. Basic Setup Internet Firewall Master 7 Nodes Gigabit switch
Gigabit speed
7 Nodes

2. Operating Systems Not supported by Redhat Redhat 9.0
Patches are available but difficult to get
Not very secure
Field tested for Globus and Condor
Redhat Enterprise System
Supported by Redhat
Not Field tested for Globus and Condor
More Secure than Redhat 9
North Carolina University system struck a deal with Redhat for all NC Universities. (~ $10.00 per copy).

3. Grid Programs Needed 5.x series Unsupported now. 6.0
NMI (NSF Middleware Initiative)
5.x series
Unsupported now.
6.0
Globus ToolkitTM  3.2.1
Condor 6.6.6
MPICH-G or

4. Grid Programs Needed
GPT Globus Condor

5. Misc. Software needed Ant 1.6.1 Axis 1.1 Bison 1.875 Gcc 3.4
Junit 3.8.1
Java 1.4.2_01
Postgresql 7.4.3

6. PROBLEMS NMI 5.x NMI 6 (may have been issues with Redhat ES ??)
problems with installation.
(may have been issues with Redhat ES ??)
problems with condor and globus working together correctly.
problems getting mpich-2 to work.
Separated out condor and globus.
NMI 6
Have not tried it as of now.
(Appears to be a big improvement on the surface)

7. Globus 3.2.1 Globus 3.2 PROBLEMS
Mpich-2 will not work with this version.
Globus 3.2.1
Mpich-2 will not work without patches.
Must use gpt-3.2 or better to build it with though I did run into problems using 3.2 when trying to install the certificates on the nodes. Had to download gpt to do that part though it gave problems with the basic install of globus.

8. PROBLEMS
Matlab
We ran into problems with Matlab which we are still trying to resolve. Basically:
You must be able to run multicast on your network for Distributed Matlab to work correctly.

9. PROBLEMS
Java
Version 1.4.2_05 had problems as well. We went back to 1.4.2_01 and this fixed the problems that we ran into.
Ant
Ran into problem with ant. Found that an earlier version of ant was installed with the OS. Once we removed that version everything was ok.

10. Misc. Other Programs NIS
Used so that accounts only have to be built on the master machine. Any account on the master will now be present on the other 7 nodes.
NFS
Used so that directories can be mounted from the master to the node machines. Very helpful for loading home directories for users (which will include their certificates) and for files that the machines need to share like /etc/grid-security/grid-mapfile.
MPICH-2
Program similar to condor which allows users to schedule jobs on other machines.