Windows Cluster Edition 438
eth8686 writes "Microsoft is aiming to have its first cluster version of Windows ready in time for a supercomputing conference this fall." From the article: "The next version of the Compute Cluster edition will extend to Microsoft's .Net programming infrastructure, letting developers write software using the C# programming language, he said."
Slogan (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slogan (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Slogan (Score:5, Funny)
They are the borg, remember?!
Re: Slogan (Score:5, Funny)
OK, I'll say it (Score:3, Funny)
There. I said it. Happy?
Re:Slogan (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me be the first one to say: Windows isn't
- Designed
- Ment
- Capable
for/of running on a Top500 [top500.org] server.The most important part is the design on those systems. They need flexibility. Windows is anything but flexible. No wonder that the top500 is mostly made up from unix/linux systems.
They need customized things, not a toy. The people running those supercomputers want to customize things themselves. Windows is just not ment for anything else than desktops, thats the truth and i know i'll get flamed for it.
Re:Slogan (Score:5, Insightful)
No argument there.
They need customized things, not a toy. The people running those supercomputers want to customize things themselves. Windows is just not ment for anything else than desktops, thats the truth and i know i'll get flamed for it.
Windows is the last operating system I'd associate with 'super computer', in any interpretation of the phrase. It's a good jack-of-all-trades platform, but I can't see running bloated code, particularly using the CLR. Maybe it's a completely different operation system than we see, as in 'only the kernel', without all the plug-and-play, DRM, and annoying as hell code which throws requestors up while your typing (to steal keystrokes and disappear to do The Bob knows what with your inadvertent instruction.)
Re:Slogan (Score:3, Interesting)
The ones that do require attention right now aren't going to get it if you look up from the keyboard just in time to see that you hitting space inbetween words has dismissed it...
No application should be able to steal focus from another; nothing is that important on a desktop machine.
No dialogue box should be dismissable in a single, commonly-used key press; it's too easy to do it by accident ("Shit, what did
Re:Slogan (Score:3, Informative)
WinXP *does* have an option for 'let no window steal focus' (need the TweakUI powertool to set it). However instead it causes the toolbar icon of the app to 'blink' and auto-raises the toolbar if you have it set to auto-hide.
Again, an annoying option, but at does remove the likelyhood of accidently agreeing to something.
Slashbotters and FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Slashbotters and FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the turtle designed for that?
Is it capable of that?
Please answer those questions, then replace the turtle with windows and breaking the sound barrier with building a cluster. As someone noted, MS and Dell put together that cluster. The obvious conclusion is that other people aren't out of their minds yet.
Also, i said "No wonder that the top500 is mostly made up from unix/linux systems". The exception makes the rule stronger, is this familiar?
According to this article [itjungle.com]: "the computer scientists behind the Top 500 list say that 291 of the machines (58 percent) on the list are clustered machines. While the Top 500 list does not specifically identify the operating system platform, it probably breaks down to around 55 percent Linux, 40 percent Unix, and another 5 percent as Windows platforms."
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the turtle designed for that?
Yes.
Is it capable of that?
It's in the Top500 list, isn't it? If it wasn't capable, it wouldn't be doing it. Simple as that.
Please answer those questions
Just did.
So, basically, you implied Windows isn't good enough to run as a Top500 server, someone pointed out that it already does, and now you're defending it by saying, "Even though it is, it's still not good enough?"
This kind of crap really makes the community look immature.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
> > Is the turtle designed for that?
> Yes.
Too many... sarcastic replies... can't choose...
This has to rank as one of the stupidest statements ever made. Dude, I don't know what things are like on your planet, but around here, turtles were not designed for any such thing. They were designed for swimming in a much thicker medium at much slower speeds.
In the same way, Windows was not designed for clustering. It wasn't even designed to be multi-user or Internet-enabled, and we've seen the security problems that have resulted from Microsoft kludging it to do what it was never designed to do. (And I'm sure you're going to say "Of course Windows 1.0 wasn't designed for that, but NT was!" But NT, while it was (at least supposed to be) a from-the-ground-up rewrite of Windows, it still kept enough of the original design to be seriously flawed with respect to multi-user (see the shatter attack) and the Internet (see the RPC issues, along with many others). Microsoft added to the capabilities, but never fixed the design.)
And, yes, you can make turtles fly supersonic. But the G-force from the JATO does bad things to their internal organs, and the duct tape chafes their hide. In the same way, Microsoft can make Windows cluster. But was it designed for it? Or was it just forced into the role, with a lot of duct tape and bandaids?
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Vulnerabilities in RPC were due to implementation problems, like buffer overflows, not bad design.
Although I will say that NT was originally expected to run on closed networks, not the Internet.As someone said before, the operating system itself has a lot less to do with clustering than the applications themselves. You can build a cluster on just about anything, given the right application. The OS does need support any special communication hardware, but even that could be an add-on in the form of drivers.
Windows has had official cluster support since Windows 2000. The cluster service does some interesting things, but requires a lot of application support.
I'm curious: what kind of support do other OSes provide to clusters?
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm afraid you are very wrong rewt66, the NT based OS was designed from the beginning to be multi-user capable system. To be clear on this, NT has very a very capable multi-user model, infact it relies on this fact, combined with a very fine grained security model (read here [williamstallings.com] and here: ftp://shell.shore.net/members/w/s/ws/Support/OS/W2 K.pdf).
Security problems exist with all operating systems.
Shatter, you mentionned it, is confined to single session userspace code, and it relies on badly written privaliged code - think drivers, ... thus your citation of the shatter just demonstrates you lack of knowlege. If you want to know what is dangerous in a multiuser system then here are some examples of privalege escalation, look: here [google.co.uk] and here [google.co.uk].
And no Windows NT was not a ground up rewrite of Windows 1.0 it is infact a entirely different design, only sharing a subset of user-space application API.
So the dude is not stupid, but he would be if he were asking you for advice
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
A few posts up:
"Let me be the first one to say: Windows isn't
Designed
Ment
Capable
for/of running on a Top500 server."
Are you saying you didn't mean what you wrote?
If it does the job well enough to be in the Top500, then obviously it's a tool that is right for the job. Just stop backtracking already and admit you were wrong.
Re:Slashbotters and FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
The phrase is "the exception that proves the rule", but what people like you don't seem to realize is that the phrase is very old and it uses the word prove to mean "test", not "demonstrate" or "show the opposite can't be true".
Why so many people believe that "exceptions prove rules" simply because a phrase (that they don't understand!) says so, when it is obviously counter to all logic or reason, is something I won't understand.
Re:Slashbotters and FUD - link with rank please (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this my failure, or is your link just FUD too?
Re:Slashbotters and FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a very good example.
Re:Slogan (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slogan (Score:3, Funny)
of Alaska hasn't won his "decency everywhere"
fight yet.
When I read the
Server, I blew my coffee out my nose as I tried
to recompose myself. Imagine if you can, a
hijacked Windows Cluster as a mail relay server!
The correct and most appropriate term to apply:
"a Cluster fuck of BSODs".
Re:Slogan (Score:5, Insightful)
Most customization is application customization, not OS customization. And customizing an app is identical to writing an app. And people write apps for Windows all the time. A wide range of apps, doing a wide range of things. So you can't be talking about app customization.
But if you're talking about OS customization, could you at least wait until you see what the MS Compute Cluster implementation includes, before you complain?
For all you know, the whole point of releasing a cluster-specific version of the OS is to include more of this flexibility you insist is so important.
Re:Slogan (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slogan (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Slogan (Score:5, Funny)
Nasa have just released a View [nasa.gov] of the cluster in operation from space.
Re:Slogan (Score:4, Funny)
MS puts the 'F' in ClusterF@#&
Sorry Mods, couldn't help myself.
Re:Slogan (Score:5, Funny)
'I felt a great disturbance in the force. As though millions of voices cried out in terror, and then suddenly silenced.'
Windows Cluster EF edition (Score:2)
Microsoft has got to fix this naming convention of theirs, unless someone is really trying to tell us in secret how messed up things really are?
What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, Theimer said the cluster version will include some restrictions on how the version can be used to prevent companies from performing standard Web hosting or other functions.
Wow. When you compare this to the standard capability of OS X, it seems like a real rip off. You get reduced functionality. Why?
The first version will reproduce many basic features of Linux clusters, Theimer said.
Then why not use Linux?
The next version of the Compute Cluster edition will extend to Microsoft's
Ah, I see why now. But what impetus is there to use the first version if this is coming in the second version? Kinda like Windows 1.0 I guess.
Although such code runs more slowly than C programs running directly on Windows,
Aauuummm........
writing programs in C# that run atop
Says who? It certainly is/will be easier but more secure is something that has yet to be proven. To date, the track record is not impressive.
Often, Theimer said, it's more important to have a program as soon as possible than to have it running at peak performance, he said.
Ah, the fast food approach to software design. Don't you know that stuff makes you code obese and causes an early demise necessitating frequent checkups?
A third version will include developer improvements to ease programming on clusters. It also will include high-level management tools and will help customers integrate their high-performance computing equipment with the rest of their infrastructure, he said.
This is going to be in the third version of the release? I guess they have been looking at Xgrid, Pooch and other software and it will take them two versions to integrate what others have already got.
Seriously, Microsoft. Please come up with some innovative features and give us something that no other vendor offers or in a package so slick that we cannot help ourselves, but to purchase the Microsoft solution. This is nothing that is not offered elsewhere in the market, but has the appearance of locking us further into a Microsoft paradigm.
You guys have the right idea in that cluster computing is going to be a bigger market than it currently is, but you have to be more hungry and learn again how to ship software that creates desire and meets your customers needs in a timely fashion.
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine a beowulf cluster of product activation procedures...
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Eh? I thought one of the big features of C# was the ability to run "unmanaged code"... so it's possible if you try
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a big point that is being missed here though. We're talking about cluster computing, presumably on a large scale. You don't bother with something like that unless performance is a top priority. Should security be a second priority? In terms of the code written to do computations on a large powerful supercomputer... hell yes! You see, if you have a huge expensive compute engine, you don't go randomly hooking it up to the internet, nor letting anyone who hasn't had careful screening get access to the damn thing. Security for a cluster needs to be strong - so strong that by the time you actually have any access to the cluster you can be assumed to be trusted and not worry about buffer overflows. Basically, if a cracker has account access to the machine to be able to use a local buffer overflow, your security has already failed big time, and him getting root is, by the point, the least of your worries.
Jedidiah.
Not true anymore... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cluster != huge expensive computer engine. With software like clusterKNOPPIX (I was just playing with this today), it's really easy to take all of the computers in a research lab (that are already connected to the internet) and turn them into a load-sharing cluster. This is different from a super-computer, although you can presumably get some of the benefit if you are also running MPI (I haven't tried that locally yet). In case you don't understant the purpose of such a cluster it's so that when I want to launch 100 simulations (say to do a parameter sweep, which is embarrassingly parallel), I can launch them all from my local computer and openMosix will automagically distribute the workload across all computers in our lab.
Personally, I'm glad Windows is getting in the game, just like I'm glad when the US gets competition in the space program. Competition, it's a good thing (tm). :)
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry for asking such a stupid question but do you really need security for a cluster? If it's supposed to be a big calculator used for scientific purpose, you don't connect it anywhere. Just write you code heavily optimized in C and assembly language, connect everything using sockets or MPI and run it. If you need a front-end like a web server, it's not meant to be fast and you can write this in a more secure but slower language. Where am I wrong?
C insecure? Use Fortran. (Score:5, Interesting)
Then use what many in the high performance compupting field do: Fortran. There is at least one advanced C++ development project I know of that has Fortran as its core deep in the bowels of the FFT routines... for efficiency reasons. It's just plain faster.
Plus, how many buffer overflow exploits have you seen recently on Fortran programs? :-)
Re:C insecure? Use Fortran. (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, we have them. We work them the same way as unix mail viruses: on the honor system.
hawk
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not much modification, for values of "not much" which include installing a special edition of the OS with a distinct flavor of licensing and pricing.
If they don't make enabling cluster support easy, they're sunk. If you have to reinstall the OS to enable clustering, why not install an OS that is proven to cluster well?
If Microsoft wants to be taken seriously in this, what they really need to do is make a free/cheap Clus
The point is... (Score:3, Insightful)
C doesn't kill people, sloppy programmers kill people.
C is just a language; it is neither secure nor insecure. It depends on how lazy the programmer using it is. I'm thrilled there's a thing called C# that helps sloppy programmers. Warn me if anybody writes an OS in that bloated pig.
But C by and of itself dosn't mean code [cr.yp.to] is insecure [cr.yp.to].
Re:What is the point? (Score:2)
[/sarcasm]
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Says who? It certainly is/will be easier but more secure is something that has yet to be proven. To date, the track record is not impressive.
Well, sounds like you're spreading FUD to me. Compared to Win32, CLR almost has to be an improvement.Consider that Win32 was designed pre-network, had networking added as an afterwards but before security was understood to be an issue, then has had security issues patched over the years as they arose. It's got to be a nightmare.
CLR has pretty much what you'd want to have designed in security-wise, designed in from the ground up. Stuff like having the JIT compiler examine intermediate code for type correctness; allowing code to require the principal to have certain authorizations to run; cryptographic authentication of code identity etc. Not to say there aren't going to be issues in the future, but almost certainly a system designed from the ground up with modern security ideas going to be better than the patched monstrosity that is Windows.
Ah, the fast food approach to software design. Don't you know that stuff makes you code obese and causes an early demise necessitating frequent checkups?
Well, you're just being deliberately obtuse here. What he's saying is that in a lot of cases where you need serious computing power, you're trying to come up with an answer. The right metric for this is time-to-answer. Time-to-run is obviously a big part of this for those kinds of problems, but if you can cut down on programming time by working with a better environment enough, a linear factor increase in runtime may be acceptable. It is actually more than acceptable if you can use the time you gain by working with a better programming environment to engineer a solution with a more efficient algorithm.
What is interesting is the implicit acknowledgement that Win32 is insecure and hard to program well for.
Then why not use Linux?
Well, yeah. It's going to be a tough sell right out of the gate, since people in this market presumably are more likely to know what they're doing. You can't fault 'em for trying.
Seriously, Microsoft. Please come up with some innovative features and give us something that no other vendor offers or in a package so slick that we cannot help ourselves, but to purchase the Microsoft solution. This is nothing that is not offered elsewhere in the market, but has the appearance of locking us further into a Microsoft paradigm.
Why? Why shouldn't somebody try to make a better product that embodies proven and well established ideas?
Is Linux technologically innovative? Well, no, not that much. It doesn't mean it isn't a good operating system, or innovative in other ways. But with a few exceptions just about all of the ideas and many of the technologies in Linux originate elsewhere. Nobody with any technological maturity considers it "cheating", it's really just good engineering to solve known problems with proven approaches.
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of times the "edition" versions are just differently licensed. I know thats not the answer you wanted, mostly because your post wants to rip on microsoft pulling off something kinda neat with Windows.
Also there are speci
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
By this first statement, it's obvious you're clueless about Windows and OS X. The normal version of Windows Server clusters just fine, too. This is a stripped-down, lower-cost version specifically for clustering.
OS X doesn't c
Cluster Games (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft is behind on this, and they're now playing catch-up. I suspect we'll see a few cluster-related items from them in the next year.
Karma to Burn so.... (Score:5, Funny)
There, it's been said.
Oh boy... (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine.. (Score:4, Funny)
Image a.... (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of........
No, wait, it's just too terrible to comprehend.
Re:Image a.... (Score:2)
Huffy has announced its intention of releasing sports cars.
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:2)
Actually this is a very good point. Cray computers [cray.com] use Linux, Quadrics computers [quadrics.com] use Linux, and I'm sure anyone who has made an "Imagine a Beowulf cluster" post has read this [cnn.com]. If I was managing Microsoft, I'd want people to think Windows is a powerful OS, so the last place I'd want it to be overtaken on is the world's more powerful computers. Especially by a freely available OS like Linux. Thus...the upcoming supercomputer Windows.
BTW the Windows-for-supercomputers story is already rising up on the Google [google.com]
cost (Score:5, Insightful)
cost benefit analysis.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:cost (Score:2)
I'm not so sure about that. The price per node is constantly decreasing. I don't know why you couldn't build a decently performing node for less than $500. It seems to me that to compete against linux, you'd need a per-node license cost of less than $40-$50, given that somehow running Windows would be a Good Thing for you.
beowulf cluster (Score:3, Funny)
oh come on someone was gonna say "beowulf cluster" eventually, and i have "Karma: Excellent" so might as well be me getting flamed
Cluster...? (Score:5, Funny)
Every edition of Windows I've ever tried has been a pretty reliable cluster-f*ck, where's the news here ;)
Who said? (Score:2)
Who said that?
This will validate the market to the masses (Score:3, Insightful)
At least, that will be the corporate management perception.
This move could put clustered computing in the mainstream.
Re:This will validate the market to the masses (Score:2)
To what "mainstream" are you referring, exactly? Does "the masses" really need cluster-based paral
Re:This will validate the market to the masses (Score:2)
s/Does/Do/
This is why one should not only use the "preview" button, but actually read one's previewed post before hitting "submit". :-)
Re:This will validate the market to the masses (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to be mean but the mainstream doesn't need to simulate weather, model proteins, or find subatomic particles soon. Plus they don't have several hundred spare computers lying around.
Customary quip ... (Score:3, Funny)
On second thoughts, should this be called a "Grendel" cluster?
How Amazingly Unuseful (Score:5, Funny)
Where do I sign up to throw my IT budget down the drain?
Finally fixed the message passing interface... (Score:4, Funny)
Not happening (Score:5, Insightful)
If they want so much as the proverbial foot in the door, they must 1) release all (as in *ALL*) of the source code under a GPL or BSD license, 2) make it available for free to all comers, 3) have user's 3rd-party apps (ISE-TCAD, CFDRC, etc) ported, and 4) provide a knowledge base equal to (All Linux + BSD hackers) * Google.
And that only gets their foot in the door.
Re:Not happening (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, don't get me wrong, there's no chance at all that C# and MS code will run on a clustered super-computer in the
Re:Not happening (Score:3, Insightful)
Excel is another one that often starts small and grows to ginormous proportions. I've blown my share of buffers in Excel too, and again, the limitations are not in hardware. The software simply falls over and dies at a cer
C#, dunno, how about Fortran#? (Score:2, Insightful)
no need (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore, a lot of scientific libraries are now written in C and C++, for which there are already compilers with CLR backends.
But there is no need to recompile: unlike Java, C# and the CLR have very fast and easy to use native interfaces, so you can just keep your existing binaries and c
Out of Academia (Score:5, Funny)
It references the original "coming out" article which states:
So now I'm curious... Are they selling to managers, who use the windows i/f and want to think they can "get the job done" on the new server cluster? Or are they trying to suggest that no one in corp uses un*x systems?
I think what Microsoft really needs to do is come up with a line of kitchen appliances. I for one would buy them. I mean, hey, maybe then I could learn how to cook! Imagine having the same interface on the fridge and the coffee maker! Oh sure, some whiny liberal will probably complain that they don't NEED the percolate button for their ice cream, but this is America! Choice is what made this country great!
Note: /. may edit out the
tags.Old news. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Old news. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure amongst all the sniping and bitching comments in here, some people will actually be interested to see how it pans out.
Re:Old news. (Score:2)
Re:Old news. (Score:2)
Results here on Slashdot.
Please.
Pricing (Score:5, Interesting)
That shouldn't be a problem. At these prices [redhat.com] Windows 2003 is already cheaper. It's only when you start adding CALs that Microsoft gets more expensive and people won't be buying a lot of CALs for a supercomputing cluster.
Re:Pricing (Score:5, Informative)
One of the benfits of Linux is that it is flexible, and can be reshaped and repackaged accrding to differing needs (in some ways that's what different distributions are all about). If you want a cluster solution, go talk to people who build cluster distributions (Scyld is far from the only one).
Jedidiah.
Affordable? (Score:3, Funny)
Clusters are the new hotness (Score:2)
first time i read that (Score:3, Funny)
I thought i was wrong
Sorry (Score:3, Funny)
C# may take over this market (Score:3, Interesting)
Sun really screwed this up with Java: if they had taken the scientific and numerical communities seriously and added the necessary features to Java, Java could be the undisputed winner in this market. Instead, Sun kept Java proprietary, played politics with it, and ultimately turned into a bloated web applications platform.
Sun has been claiming that they will be coming out with a separate Java-like numerical language, but that will likely be too little too late.
Re:C# may take over this market (Score:5, Insightful)
For a community that still uses Fortran? I don't think that's their biggest concern.
Sun really screwed this up with Java: if they had taken the scientific and numerical communities seriously and added the necessary features to Java, Java could be the undisputed winner in this market.
Standard Java requires IEEE floating point, so Java programs run the same everywhere. A community that used Crays (which were renown for their lousy, but fast, floating point) doesn't want their programs to run everywhere with precise but slow mathematics; they want their programs to run on their hardware with the hardware floating point as fast as possible.
ultimately turned into a bloated web applications platform.
Isn't that what Java is? It sounds like you're asking Java to service an audience completely different from what it was designed for.
C# is a winner for these kinds of applications: it is far simpler and less error prone than C++,
For a community that still uses Fortran? Not my biggest concern.
I don't see either Java or C# offering the raw speed that the scientific community wants. Speed and predictability come first, not portability or security (scientific code never needs to run as root and frequently runs on computers disconnected from the internet.)
aaaha! (Score:4, Funny)
*Sits back*
:(
In Soviet Russia, M...ahh fuck it.
Imagine a Beow...bah never mind
BAHAHAHAHAA - Cluster...baaahhahah - oh you guys are serious - Sorry
Windows on TOP500? Not! (Score:2)
Dealing with Bloatware in a whole new way (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, I knew Microsoft would come up with a new way to force new hardware. Now companies will need a server farm to run Office BWE 2010.
(BWE: BloatWare Edition)
Interesting... (Score:2, Funny)
Imagine a ... (Score:3, Funny)
Quoted: (Score:5, Funny)
Sneak Peek... (Score:5, Funny)
Activation is the problem (Score:3, Funny)
Real clusters dont care (Score:5, Interesting)
If you take a look at the worlds largest supercomputing project, it uses a distributed computing system, and it's for the most part os agnostic, but, the target software has not been compiled for _all_ availble platforms. For reference, check out seti@home. Granted, this project is of a scale that it deserved a customized message architecture, so it's quite unique overall.
Clusters in general are utilized to solve problems in a distributed manner. In the scientific community, MPI is used, and in the web hosting world, clusters are used for load balancing and high availability. The reality is, both of these tasks can be very application specific, and operating system agnostic. In theory, there is no reason a properly written MPI application cannot be deployed on a cluster consisting of half linux, and half windows machines. In reality, such applications tend to rely on artifacts of having identical nodes, and it would be a lot of extra work maintaining a code base such that it can be arbitrarily launched on both platforms. Its far more efficient to tune it up for a single platform, and just use the same platform across the entire cluster.
In the load balancing world, same issues will surface. There is really no reason you cant use a mix of windows and linux based apache systems to back a load balancing cluster. Again, it would be a LOT of extra work managing the mixed configuration, and ultimately, that gets kind of pointless.
Out in the real world, clustering did focus in on linux rather early in the game, because it's open source, hence the folks doing clustering had the option to actually make changes to accomodate thier clusters. There are numerous models to choose from, ranging from a really simple MPI implementation where each machine is virtually independant, and simply passing messages via some high level api, all the way down to the OpenMosix implementation where each machine in the cluster just has the appearance of 'yet another processor' on the overall host. In the former case, applications need to be custom written for the cluster, in the latter case, no modifications are required to applications. Two vastly different architectures, that both fall within the buzzword 'cluster', but are so far removed from each other, there is no similarity other than the fact both use a lot of computers.
A move by microsoft to produce a 'cluster centric' variation of windows actually validates the linux cluster more than anything else can in the marketplace. It demonstrates clearly that the cluster buzzword is gaining enough traction in the management mindset that microsoft needs a presence in that area.
It'll be interesting to see what the final form of the product really is. If it's just a set of gui configurators to manage an MPI system, it's really nothing that couldn't have been done as a third party add-on, and an admission that no third parties were interested in tackling this high end portion of the marketplace on the windows platform.
If the clustering system turns out to be a full process/thread level migration system, akin to the mosix implementation, it'll have a lot of potential, simply because applications do not need to be re-written in order to take advantage of the cluster, assuming ofc, the application already has enough smarts to distribute it's workload amongst multiple processors. the last time I checked (and it's been quite a while), excel is not smart enought to distribute it's calcs amongst multiple processors, something to do with the single threaded nature of serial calculation.
The final proof of technical issues will come over the next few years, and it's going to be an interesting thing to watch. There is going to be a significant amount of support business generated in migrating clusters from one platform to the
Wrong solution to wrong problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one that read this and think Theimer and MS have no clue what clusters are designed to do? Using a spreadsheet to do lots of number crunching is an application problem. You are using an application in ways that it was not intended. That's far different than an OS performance issue where your application is limited by what the OS can do and need some way to tweak the OS to perform better. How is MS Cluster going to solve this spreadsheet problem? Is that spreadsheet going to run across hundreds of machines? My solution would be not to a use a spreadsheet in the first place. There must be some other more suitable application.
I may be cynical but I see this as another ploy by MS to expand their revenue by bloat. As their software gets more bloated, the average consumer will be forced to use newer and more powerful OS to run it. I'm sure that MS will be tickled in 2010 when you need a 64 way processor just to run BackOffice 2009 so they can charge your company for a license for each of the the 64 processors.
Not for scientific (Score:3, Interesting)
Fat chance in hell any of us use anything *BUT* fortran. Why should we care for new language which do NOT BRING ANYTHING to us and force us to port many many libraries, debug again what is mostly now bug free, and start over ? Man. Get a clue. And Make a MS-FOrtran for that cluster and MAYBE if for the same price we get better performance you might get a chance. But for worst performance and same price
As for security... What security ? By the time your are on the cluster you should already have been thru with security, through a front end. The Cluster is to be used for high performance calculation NOT for securly checking bounds of arrays.
Frankly I think this offer is only directed towward marketing/enterprise which use their cluster for ANYTHING but mathematics.
Re:kneejerk response (Score:2, Funny)
--dv
Re:kneejerk response (Score:3, Funny)
Place your orders today.
Re:On topic beowulf Windows cluster jokes? (Score:5, Funny)
But if there were, "I'd hate to be the guy calling up Microsoft to activate all those copies of windows"
Re:On topic beowulf Windows cluster jokes? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:On topic beowulf Windows cluster jokes? (Score:2)
Re:First? (Score:3, Informative)