Operational Overview

Compute node hard disks are used for three primary purposes:

• Swap Space — Expands the Virtual Memory of the local machine.

• Application File Storage — Provides scratch space and persistent storage for application output.

• System Caching — Increases the size and count of executables and libraries cached by the local node.

In addition, a local disk may be used to hold a cluster file system (used when the node acts as a file server to other nodes). To make this possible, Scyld provides programs to create disk partitions, a system to automatically create and check file systems on those partitions, and a mechanism to mount file systems.