You have two or more Raspberry Pi at home?
You want to try putting them together to make a cluster?
You’re at the good place
When I bought my second Raspberry Pi, I immediately wanted to build one
How to build a Raspberry Pi cluster?
You need two or more Raspberry Pi (not necessarily the same models)
You have to install softwares on all nodes like MPICH and MPI4PY
And a good step-by-step tutorial to make this work: you have one 🙂
As it can be a complex topic for beginners, I’ll start by a little introduction on clusters in general
Then I’ll explain you what I have done and how you can do the same on your side
Cluster presentation
What’s a cluster?
Basically, a cluster is a group of computers in a single entity
The goal is to make them work together, to improve the global performance
All the computers works on the same task, reducing the time needed to finish it
Don’t confuse computer clusters with load balancing
In a load balancing architecture, each computer is working on a different task to decrease the master node’s load
In a cluster, we take advantage of the total power of the cluster to run a task in parallel
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Clusters examples
Computer clusters find their origins in the 60s and are still used today (At the same time as the first works on networking)
The first commercial computer cluster in the history is the Arcnet (see the image on the left)
Its goal was to connect groups of Datapoint 2200 computers
It’s damn old in the computer history 🙂
At the time I wrote these lines, the IBM Summit from the ORNL laboratory is the biggest supercomputer in the world
With over 2 million CPU cores and 3000To of RAM, and always increasing, it will be tough to compete with
Here is an illustration below if you want to know what it looks like
Raspberry Pi application
Let’s go back to our more realistic dimensions with the adaptation of that definition on our Raspberry Pi
As you know, the Raspberry Pi is not so powerful, but it’s cheap
So it’s the perfect device to build a cluster
We can make it run tasks faster on 4 devices instead of only one, for a reasonable price
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to build your first Raspberry Pi cluster
You can do it with two nodes to start and add others later if needed
Cluster implementation
My scenario
I’m doing this exercise for you, with two Raspberry Pi:
- A Raspberry 3B+: the master node that will run all the stuff
- A Raspberry Pi Zero: the second node, to increase global performance (yes it’s maybe not the best model choice, but it’s just for the test)
As the preparation phase is long (compilation time mainly), I’ll do it on the 3B+ only to do this faster
Then I’ll copy the SD card to another to get a Raspberry Pi Zero almost ready without doing the same thing again
Finally, there are extra steps to do on both to connect them together and run the first script
If you have more than one node to add, repeat the same process for each node
Prerequisites
To follow this tutorial, you’ll need:
- 2 or more Raspberry Pi (any model, but if you buy it, I recommend the Raspberry Pi 3B+)
- 2 or more SD Cards (check my recommended product page if you need some)
- A cheap 5-ports gigabit switch to plug all Pi’s together
- Power cables, or a power bank with 2 or more ports
- A Network cable for each Pi (wireless is possible, but not recommended)
- Optional: for serious guys, this cluster case to stack Raspberry Pi
This will optimize your cabling, keep everything tidy, and also cool the nodes correctly. I recommend this kind of case if you’re keeping your cluster running frequently.
And for the software, I’ll explain you this in the following parts
Note: if you have SD cards from different sizes, it’s not a problem
But you need to install the master on the smallest.
Otherwise, you’ll have an issue when flashing 64G image to a 16G SD card 🙂
Master preparation
The first step in my scenario is to make the installation on one Raspberry Pi and then duplicate to the others
Start with the most powerful you have
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Basic installation
We start as for any project, with the Raspbian installation
Download the Raspbian Lite from the Raspberry Pi Foundation website: link here
Raspbian Desktop is ok, but we don’t need a GUI for this project
Install it and boot for the first time (if you don’t know how to install Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi, follow my guide here and come back later)
Then you need to follow these extra steps:
- Change some configuration options with Raspi Config
- Run Raspi Config
sudo raspi-config
- Change the pi user password in Change user password
(We’ll enable SSH, and it’s not a good idea to let the default password with SSH running) - Enable SSH in Interfacing options > SSH > Yes
- Change the host name in Network options > Host name
Choose something clear, like “Master”
- Run Raspi Config
- Update your system
- Update the repository sources
sudo apt update
- Upgrade all packages
sudo apt upgrade
- Update the repository sources
- Reboot to apply all changes
sudo reboot
You finished the base installation, we can move to specific software for this project
MPICH installation
What’s MPICH?
MPICH is the main tool we need to run a cluster
MPICH is a free implementation from the MPI standard
MPI stands for Message Passing Interface and its goal is to manage parallel computing architectures
In short, this is what will allow us to run a script on several Raspberry Pi simultaneously
MPICH preparation
MPICH needs different folders:
- The first one to download and extract the source code
- A different one to build the code
- And a last one that will be the installation path
So you need to create three different folders, for example:
sudo mkdir /opt/mpi sudo mkdir /opt/mpi-dl sudo mkdir /opt/mpi-build
The first one will be the definitive path to use it later and the others to download and build the code
You also need to install Fortran before installing MPICH
sudo apt install gfortran
MPICH installation
We are now ready to start the MPICH installation process:
- Move to the download folder
cd /opt/mpi-dl
- Download the file from the MPICH website, for example:
sudo wget http://www.mpich.org/static/downloads/3.3/mpich-3.3.tar.gz
Change the download link if there is a newer version number available
- Then extract all files from this archive
sudo tar zxvf mpich-3.3.tar.gz
- Move to the build folder for the next step
cd /opt/mpi-build
- Run the configuration process
sudo /opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/configure – prefix=/opt/mpi
This can take a few minutes, be patient
- Then use make to build
sudo make
Take a drink, or even a nap.
On my Raspberry Pi 3B+ this took 90 minutes … - Finally, you can install it with:
sudo make install
Once done, make a test to assure that everything is working well
To do this, run this command for example:
/opt/mpi/bin/mpiexec -n 1 date
If you get the current date from the master, the MPI installation is done
Move to the next part
MPI4PY installation
What’s MPI4PY
For the moment, MPI is available for Fortran and C scripts on your Raspberry Pi
But as the Raspberry Pi runs with Python, we’ll add Python capability to our cluster
For this, we need to install a Python library: MPI4PY
MPI4PY preparation
MPI4PY installation process is easy as it’s available with pip
But you need some dependencies before:
sudo apt install python-pip python-dev libopenmpi-dev
That’s it, move to the installation process
MPI4PY installation
- Install MPI4PY with pip:
sudo pip install mpi4py
- Ok, now we’ll create a basic Python script to test it with MPI
Move to the home folder and create a basic script:cd /home/pi nano test.py
Paste this line inside (or whatever you want):
print("Hello") - Make sure that your script works with Python
python test.py
If you kept my script, this should display “Hello”
- Then test it with MPI
/opt/mpi/bin/mpiexec -n 4 python test.py
This should now display “Hello” four times
This is not useful, but it’s just a test to validate this step
If this is working correctly, it’s good, your master installation is ready
MPI can now run Python scripts and we can start the nodes preparation
Duplicate the master
The next step is to duplicate the master’s SD card into other cards, one for each node
To do this, we’ll create an image from the SD card and flash it on the other cards
Create the image
On Windows, you need a software like Win32DiskImager
Click on the link, download and install it on your computer
- Start the program
- In the “Image file” field, choose a temporary directory and a filename “cluster_master.img” for example
- Then choose the Device letter corresponding to the SD card
- Finally, press the “Read” button to start the image creation
This process took about 15 minutes on my computer - Once done, eject the master SD card and keep it safe
On Linux, it should be something like:
sudo dd if=/dev/sdb > cluster_master.img
I didn’t test it so I can’t guarantee this is working, but dd should do the job
Create SD Card for nodes
Once the image is ready, you need to create the SD card for each nodes of your cluster
- Insert the new SD card into your computer
- In Win32 Disk Imager, select the image filename and the device letter
- Click on “Write” to create the same SD card
If you prefer you can use Etcher to do this
I always use Etcher, but here we are already in Win32 Disk Imager, so it’s the same
Again, on Linux, the dd command should do that too
At the end of this step, you have one SD card for each node you want to use
All the SD card contain the same image from the master we created before
Nodes configuration
Start all Raspberry Pi
- Insert an SD card in each Raspberry Pi you want to use
- Start them all
If you want to use WiFi for one or more nodes, there is an extra step
For example, in my case I have a Raspberry Pi Zero, and it was easier for me to put it in Wifi
- Plug a screen and keyboard on the Raspberry Pi you want to use in WiFi
- Use Raspi config to configure the WiFi
- Use the following command
sudo raspi-config
- Go in Network options > Wi-fi
- Follow the Wizard to select your network (country, SSID and pass phrase)
- Use the following command
Find all IP addresses
Once all the Raspberry Pi are started and plugged in the network, we need to get all IP addresses to use it later
- Go back to the master node (directly or with SSH)
- Install NMAP
sudo apt install nmap
nmap is a free tool for network discovery (check the website here)
We’ll use it to find all IP addresses - Use this command to find all devices on your network with a host name containing “master”
(all the Raspberry Pi have the same host name for the moment)nmap -sP 192.168.1.* | grep master
Change the network subnet if you are using another
- You should get this kind of output
- I now know my second node IP: 192.168.1.18
You should now have all the nodes IP
If you don’t know the master one, you need to use this command:
sudo ifconfig
You’ll get something like this:
The IP address is on the second line after the “inet” keyword (192.168.1.200 in this screenshot)
The last step you need to do, is to note these IP addresses in a text file on your Master node
- Create a new file in your home folder
cd /home/pi nano nodesips
- In this file, add an IP on each line (and only the IP)
- For example:
192.168.1.15 192.168.1.16 192.168.1.17 192.168.1.18
- That’s all for this part
Change the nodes host names
We’ll now change the host name on the new nodes to have a different one for each
- From the master node, connect to the first one with SSH
ssh pi@192.168.1.18
Answer “yes” to the question and enter the pi password
- Go into Raspi-config
- Use this command to access the tool
- Go in Network options > Host name
- Set a new host name for this node, for example “Node1”
- Exit raspi-config and exit this node with:
exit
Repeat these steps for each node you want to add in the cluster
Do the SSH keys exchange
The last step is to allow the master to connect to each node via SSH without password
To do this, you need to create an SSH key on the master, transfer them to all nodes to allow it
- On the master, create the SSH key with:
ssh-keygen -t rsa
Accept the default values (default path and no password)
- This tool generate two keys in the /home/pi/.ssh folder:
- id_rsa: your private key, keep it here
- id_rsa.pub: the public key, you need to send it to peers you want to access without password
- Transfer the public key to all nodes
scp /home/pi/.ssh/id_rsa.pub pi@192.168.1.18:/home/pi/master.pub
Do this for each node you want to use
- Then, go to each node and add the key to the authorized_keys file
This file contains all hosts allowed to access the system via SSH without passwordssh pi@192.168.1.18 cat master.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys exit
Do this for each node
- Now, you should be able to connect each node without password
You can make a try with:ssh pi@192.168.1.18
That’s it, you cluster is ready. We’ll now test it
Cluster usage
The cluster is now available and we’ll use MPI to run commands simultaneously on each node
As we already saw, MPI allows you to run basic commands and scripts through the cluster
Basic command
The first thing we can try is to run the same command on each node
Preferably something that don’t return the same thing 🙂
For example:
/opt/mpi/bin/mpiexec -f nodesips -n 2 hostname
nodesips is the file we created before with all IP addresses inside
And “hostname” is the command we want to run on each node
2 is for the number of thread to start, in this case change it for the number of nodes
As a result, you’ll get one line for each node in the cluster, with all nodes host names
Python script
Test script
If you followed this tutorial entirely, you should already have a test.py script on the home folder
You can test to run it on each node with the same command:
/opt/mpi/bin/mpiexec -f nodesips -n 2 python test.py
This will display “Hello” two times, once for each node
Congrats! Your Raspberry Pi cluster is operational 🙂
A new script
But if you didn’t do this script, or if you want to create new ones, there is an extra step
MPI simulates the execution of the script on each node
So you need to have the script on each node
To do this, follow this short procedure:
- Create the script on the master node
- Make sure it’s working as expected
- Then transfer this script on all nodes with scp
scp /home/pi/myscript.py pi@192.168.1.18:/home/pi/
It’s important to have the same script on each node, and with the same path
- Then you can run your script with MPI as explained before
Go further with Python
As you’d expect, we didn’t add MPI4Py just to run basic python scripts 4 times instead of one
MPI4PY is a Python library you can include in your scripts to use specific functions in your cluster
Here is a small example:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from mpi4py import MPI
comm = MPI.COMM_WORLD
rank = comm.rank
if rank == 0:
data = {'a':1,'b':2,'c':3}
else:
data = None
data = comm.bcast(data, root=0)
print 'rank',rank,data
The goal of this script is to send data from one node to all the others
In this script data is defined only for the master (rank 0)
And then we send this data value to all others nodes with the broadcast function (comm.bcast)
When you run this script, all nodes and ranks display the same message
It just an example to show you that you can add more functions in your Python script to take advantage of your cluster
I’m not an expert about this
You can find more information here
Related questions
Can I add more nodes in my cluster now? You can add more nodes at any time to your existing cluster (that’s what they do with supercomputers). You just need to create a new SD card, follow the node configuration steps again for the new node and add the new IP address in the nodesips file
The IP addresses are changing each day, what can I do? Yes, it’s a problem. For the test I didn’t do this step, but if you want to keep your cluster you need to do this. Depending on your network, you can either set a reservation in your DHCP server (so each Pi will always get the same IP on boot). Or you can set manually a static IP address in your network configuration (I explain how to do this at the end of this article)
For what kind of usage do I really need a cluster? In this tutorial, it was mainly the technology and the installation process that interested me. Not much the possibilities that are now opened to you with this cluster. This is another topic and I can’t fit all in only one article. If you want to go further, you can find more projects about clusters on Hackaday
Conclusion
That’s it, you know how to build your own Raspberry Pi cluster from two nodes to an infinity 🙂
I really liked to write this tutorial for you
It’s interesting to have an overview on how supercomputers are working
And the technology seems to be stable as I had no issues while creating my cluster (And it’s rare in computing ^^)
I hope you’ll like that too
If you have any questions or experiences to share, leave a comment below
I would like to know what you do after this first step in the supercomputer world 🙂
Thanks for the tutorial! I went ahead and setup an NFS share on the master and had the nodes mount it so I could drop scripts in there. It’s a fun exercise.
Thank you for the concise information and instructions. My Raspberry Pi 3 master and 3 Pi Zeros cluster is working like a charm.
Is there a limit to the number of nodes that you can add to a master controller Pi?
If there is, how do big clusters work? Can you make a cluster of clusters?
Thanx again.
Hi Hal,
It seems possible 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_r3z1jYHAc
Thank you for your tutorial. I very appreciate your work.
I make a cluster of 5 raspberry pi 3 and he work perfectly.
Thanks for your feedback Hugues!
thanks man it really helped me since this is my first computer i own and you helped me built it
Thanks suvan for your comment!
can i load balance a java application, database or SFTP server with this cluster?
Hi. I have set up a cluster of three.
master is a debian 10 desktop (hostname win-home (don’t ask!) 192.168.0.13
node i is a pi zero w 192.168.0.14
node 2 is a Pi 3 model B 192.168.0.21 all static.
Testing the cluster listing hostname or the python test.py give same result only two show.
By switching the ip addresses arounf on the nodesips file I prove that the middle node is omitted.
It fails completely to run (saying it can’t find the master node ip) unless the first ip is the master node. but if I switch the other two around it is always the middle one of the three that is missing and the commands always ‘hangs’ without finishing.
If I use a multiple number of 3 ie 6 or 9 I get either 2 for each (total 4) or three for each (total 6).
Testing each node separately works. Any ideas?
p.s. At first I thought I might be having problems with multi-node processors but when I increased the count one by one I realised that it definately thought there were only three nodes.
Cannot seem to find .ssh folder on any node besides the master node. As well, I do not seem to have an authorized_keys file on the master node, but a file called ‘known_hosts’. Any idea what to do?
Hi
interesting tutorial, this is about using some python scripts in your example to improve global performance
but can we use this pi cluster to launch any single software (set on each node with the same raspbian image, like you did in your tutorial) ?
Hi patrick, i try to build this cool cluster but het an error command not found at:
sudo /opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/configure –prefix=/opt/mpi
I followed al the mentioned steps. Did i miss something?
Greetings Melvin
When you ran this command “tar zxvf mpich-3.3.tar.gz” you probably got errors. Need to do sudo tar zxvf mpich-3.3.tar.gz. I had the same problem btw.
Hi John,
Thanks
It’s fixed
Do I have to flash SD cards or can i take the time to go through install steps for each node? I have other setup on my 2 worker nodes I would like to keep.
My configuration will be
master – 4b
node 1 – 4b
node 2 – 3b+
I just repeated install on my worker node, so, my next question is everything worked except I am testing the commands which are not working
I had to create the .ssh folder on my lzonepi4b2 which is the worker node to my master lzonepi4b1.
I issue command :
$/opt/mpi/bin/mpiexec -f nodesips -n 2 python test.py
and get:
[mpiexec@lzonepi4b1] HYDU_parse_hostfile (/opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/src/pm/hydra/utils/args/args.c:319): unable to open host file: nodesips
[mpiexec@lzonepi4b1] mfile_fn (/opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/src/pm/hydra/ui/mpich/utils.c:336): error parsing hostfile
[mpiexec@lzonepi4b1] match_arg (/opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/src/pm/hydra/utils/args/args.c:156):
match handler returned error
[mpiexec@lzonepi4b1] HYDU_parse_array (/opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/src/pm/hydra/utils/args/args.c:178): argument matching returned error
[mpiexec@lzonepi4b1] parse_args (/opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/src/pm/hydra/ui/mpich/utils.c:1642): error parsing input array
[mpiexec@lzonepi4b1] HYD_uii_mpx_get_parameters (/opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/src/pm/hydra/ui/mpich/utils.c:1694): unable to parse user arguments
[mpiexec@lzonepi4b1] main (/opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/src/pm/hydra/ui/mpich/mpiexec.c:148): error parsing parameters
What might have i done wrong somewhere?
Nevermind, I mis typed nodesip file instead of using nodesips, sorry for my confusion.
Working now.
I have my Pi’s connected to my home network, but thought we wanted to use the ethernet switch, and power supplies to connect the pis together I didn’t see how you do that in this tutorial, is that at a different location?
I am also not seeing any ip addresses when doing the NMAP command above.
Hi i need help with mu cluster
i followed your tutorial and when i came to the testing part(/opt/mpi/bin/mpiexec -f nodesips -n 2 python test.py)
i got this message
[proxy:0:0@Node1] HYDU_sock_connect (/opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/src/pm/hydra/utils/sock/sock.c:145): unable to get host address for MasterNode (1)
[proxy:0:0@Node1] main (/opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/src/pm/hydra/pm/pmiserv/pmip.c:183): unable to connect to server MasterNode at port 46403 (check for firewalls!)
i only have 1 node
Master-Pi3b+
Node1-pi0w
thank you and sorry for my bad English
Help my pi cluster have 2 master
Hi i need help cluster
I am creating a cluster as described, but it stop at some stage. it is “make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.” But after setting it in the previous step, it says there is no makefile. What should I do?
sudo /opt/mpi-dl/mpich-3.3/configure –prefix=/opt/mpi
not make makefile