More Virginia Tech Cluster Details

I'm glad they're running OS X contrary to past reports...

Can I be a volunteer for moving day??

During a recent analysts meeting HP's Fiorina said the mid-range server market was essentially going away, which is hurting HP's numbers. Apparently the high-end server market is relatively stable, with the growth is going towards the low end servers.

Apple seems to have hit the server market at the right time. While the VaTech cluster is PowerMacs and not Xservers, this should help give Apple a lot of street cred.

Regarding the clusters, the currently hot topic, I don't see a lot/any of them based on Windows. It looks like a two horse race for the growth area in the server market: Linux and Macs.

Yeah, I'll help move too! (I don't think they'd miss just ONE of those ;)

No, there aren't many Windows clusters for a few (hopefully) obvious reasons:

- per-CPU/per-seat pricing
- reliability
- UNIX

Pricing is one of the biggies, IMHO. At least right now, Microsoft doesn't have any sort of "cluster pricing" or "unlimited node" deal. Since the whole point of clustering is to have a low-price supercomputer, you don't want to pay much for the OS. Apple has fortunately figured this out.

One can argue reliability, but there's certainly the perception that Windows has lower reliability in the clustering community.

UNIX? Well... most of the uses for clusters are in scientific computation, and the number-crunching stuff has long been written for UNIX or UNIX-like platforms. Why do you want to port your simulation program to Windows? So Linux or Solaris or Mac OS X are great cluster solutions--you can often just recompile the package and it "just works."

I think this is a great market for Apple to push. I've seen a lot of interest in the G5 and if they can undercut Itanium or Opteron clusters, they'll be in a great position. (Yes, there are clusters around me which we'd love to have >4GB per node for performance benefits.)

-Geoff

I just want to see all of those computers running at once. I bet its nice and warm in there:)

Originally posted by evolu
I'm glad they're running OS X contrary to past reports...

as am i. i think this is very good for apple.

i wonder if any other places will be clustering these on this scale anytime soon?

If you want to use Windows on a cluster your going to need Windows Server 2003 Enterprise of Datacenter Edition. That's going to run you $4,000 retail with 25 CALs. Granted you'd be able to get a Select license and bring the cost down quite a bit if you were buying say...1100, but you would still be paying an insane amount for an OS that you would be working harder to use if your environment. While *nix is a tougher setup $4,000 X 1100 can certainly buy a techie to do the admin work.

Only one question left?

What the hell are they going to do with that much CPU power?!?

Why their going to discover the meaning of life! Also I'm sure they will soon adress the question of are we alone?