PelicanHPC is a distribution of GNU/Linux that runs as a "live CD" (or it can be put on a USB device, or it can be used as a virtualized OS). If the ISO image file is burnt to a CD, the resulting CD can be used to boot a computer. The computer on which PelicanHPC is booted is referred to as the "frontend node". It is the computer with which the user interacts. Once PelicanHPC is running, a script - "pelican_setup" - may be run. This script configures the frontend node as a netboot server. After this has been done, other computers can boot copies of PelicanHPC over the network. These other computers are referred to as "compute nodes". PelicanHPC configures the cluster made up of the frontend node and the compute nodes so that MPI-based parallel computing may be done.