How Well Does Windows Cluster?

cascadefx asks: "I work for a mid-sized mid-western university. One of our departments has started up a small Beowulf cluster research project that he hopes to grow over time. At the moment, the thing is incredibly weak... but it is running on old hardware and is basically used for dog and pony shows to get more funding and hopefully donations of higher-end systems. It runs Linux and works, it is just not anything to write home about. Here's the problem: my understanding is that an MS rep asked what it would take to get them to switch to a Microsoft cluster. Is this possible? Are there MS clusters that do what Beowulf clusters are capable of? I thought MS clusters were for load balancing, not computation... which is the hoped-for goal of this project. Can the Slashdot crowd offer some advice? If there are MS clusters, comparisons of the capabilities would be welcome." One has to only go as far as Microsoft's site to see its current attempt at clustering, but what is the real story. Have any of you had a chance to pit a Linux Beowulf cluster against one from Microsoft? How did they compare?

Comments

first post - no way

[mary-wanna]

FP - woohoo!! BTW - I have played with clustering on windows and linux. The windows was purely load balancing. Beowulf for computation of linguistics was FAR better.

As opposed to version 1.0 of any software?

[Twister002]

Anyone here run version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel? How well did it run.

Face it, most software sucks in it's first version. It's a sad fact.

my left nut cares

[IDontLikeYou]

my right is indifferent.

Re:Licensing

[gobutit]

You need the o/s licenses for each cluster box, plus the ads server(s) plus perhaps a VPN server.
You need the internet connector license if you want people to log in to *any* websites on a cluster versus all anonymous websites. If you want true load balancing ( versus client affinity ) you need m$ appcenter licenses for each cluster node. I managed a clustered m$ web server project at my last job. The cost in s/w licenses alone for a two node cluster skyrockets beyond all belief. -and don't forget the time lost trying to figure out what licenses you need. m$ reps can't even give you a straight answer.

Re:even easie:

[coolgeek]

Or a license that permits you to use development tools released under the cancerous GPL.

Re:Licensing/Reliablity

[fader]

A friend of mine who was involved with the Rocky Horror Picture show casts (in a coupl eof casts for several years) has said he is yet to meet anyone in a Rocky cast that hadn't been previously molested as a child or raped.

<raises hand>

I don't know if you're trolling or what, but I've been in Rocky casts for years, and I wasn't molested or raped. Nor were several of my closest friends who are also in Rocky casts. Nor has anyone else in the casts I've been in ever even mentioned such a thing. Hardly conclusive evidence, but based on the sample I've taken, I think it's safe to say your friend is either crazy or lying. :)

Re:Licensing/Reliablity

[danielrose]

Obviously, then, it is a repressed memory!! Now stop arguing! The troll is always right!

Re:Licensing/Reliablity

[TheCarp]

Not trolling... thats a good data point...

as I said, this was my friends experience. Maybe its just the people that he tends to end up getting close to and talking about stuff with (its not the sort of thing a person goes around telling everyone)

Again, right back to personality things... its been my experience that the people a person tends to attract tend to have certain similarities of character and experience.

However, just having known people of variou sbackgrounds, I wouldn't at all be surprized to see a disproportionate number of people with those experience in Rocky Casts (due to its subject matter)

My point was just that people do give off non-verbal clues about their past experiences often, and often people with similar major experiences seem to make similar life
decisions.

So no...not trolling...just relating my experience to the joke someone made about PHBs and battered wives. As one o fthe amotivational posters says "Dysfunction: The common link in all your dysfunctional relationships is you". There is often more truth there than one wants to admit.

-Steve

Re:Licensing/Reliablity

[darkonc]

It takes some work for people to open up about such things. Most people who've been abused or raped don't really talk about it much.(My guess is that they feel that most people aren't interested). They have to be pretty comfortable to mention it and, even then, it takes something to trigger the conversation -- but once the elephant is out of the fridge, there's a lot more willingness to talk about it.

In my experience, the 'natural' way for such conversations to open is cryptic comments that only make sense to someone who has suffered a similar abuse. If there's a positive response the conversation can quickly open up.

My guess is that once your friend started the conversation it made it a lot easier for more and more people on the cast to share (or for that matter -- even remember!) their own abuse experiences.

Given that the person with the negative response hadn't had such an experience, it's not surprising that other cast members haven't spuriously mentioned it to him. -- and unless someone mentions something like that to you, it's unlikely that you're going to figure it out.

One of my sisters supressed memory of abuse that she had experienced as a child until she was almost 30, and I'd probably never have known that a girlfriend of mine and her best friend had been abused if they hadn't started talking about fear of spiders which led to them discovering each other's abuse (and they'd been friends for years).

Like said -- It's not the kind of thing that comes into the conversation space without a good trigger, so lack of any comment is quite a bit different than an explicitly negative responce.