[Beowulf] Beowulf communication type of nodes

[Joe Landman]

On 02/24/2014 11:03 AM, Nathan Pimental wrote:
> Could one consider a cluster a beowulf if the nodes obtained their
> instructions from a hard drive, in a specific location? Or would this be
> another type of cluster? I have a shared drive, and the master node
> doles out DLL Libraries (Yes, it's neccisary the system be on windows
> XP) to the slave nodes, which execute functions in the DLLs. The results
> are returned as files.

Windows XP?  Wow ...

Ok, if you could use Wine to run this, you might get more (or less) 
stability and performance if Linux were a consideration.  As XP isn't 
supported anymore, I am not sure how well things would work with it.

Also Microsoft licensing sort of frowns upon using the cheaper versions 
of their products when you could be paying for the higher cost server 
licenses.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client_access_license .  If 
you don't have that issue solved, running things via Wine starts looking 
very attractive.

As for the terminology, I don't think many people care so much about 
which OS something is running on, its the concept of leveraging 
"non-traditional" computing resources in such a way as to effect a 
positive outcome that, IMO, defines "beowulfery".  If you can do it 
without changing your systems around, and they are all running windows, 
go for it.  Nothing wrong (IMO) in calling that a "beowulf" though it 
would be, certainly, a less than traditional instantiation of one ...




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Joseph Landman, Ph.D
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