What is ROCKS? Rocks Cluster Distribution (originally called NPACI Rocks) is a Linux distribution intended for high-performance computing clusters. It was started by NPACI and the SDSC in 2000, and was initially funded in part by an NSF grant (2000-2007) but is currently funded by the followup NSF grant. Rocks was initially based on the Red Hat Linux distribution, however modern versions of Rocks are now based on CentOS, with a modified Anaconda installer that simplifies mass installation onto many…