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Microsoft Finally up for Distributed Computing?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the drinking-philosophers dept.

ReeprFlame writes "eWeek has reported overhearing Microsoft's plans to finally get into the distributed computing market. Considering that the Windows platform has never had the ability to parallel compute in the past, it leaves great potential to the company's operating system development. From current *nix systems we have today, such a grid proves very useful, especially in the serving arena. However, we are unsure of Microsoft's target for the software. Would it be an addition to home users computers as well as the server versions of Windows? As of now it is unclear, but Microsoft probably will bring this situation to life in the near future since it does hold alot of power for them over other platforms."

3 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. could be good by Cheeze · · Score: 4, Interesting

    i always wondered why there's not an easy way to utilize all of the computers in a network to perform a task. Most of the computers on corporate networks are windows machines, and most of those are sitting idle 99% of the time. If there was a way to harness that power for something useful, like an oracle database, web hosting, mail hosting, etc, the whole network would not be bottlenecked by one overloaded server. Mosix kinda solves that problem, but on the linux-side only.

    If someone wanted to make millions of dollars, build something like that for windows and charge minimally for it. Better do it before Microsoft does.

    --
    Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
  2. Re:Not a good idea by tesmako · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The NT kernel is modular and well-design, I can't imagine that it would be more troublesome than it was for Linux (and probably significantly less work).

    I have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to networking and security in NT, sure the WIN32 part is troublesome to keep secure, but NT in itself has no such problems.

  3. MS clustering? Its a Joke! by Savage650 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Keep in mind though that Windows clusters are existing.

    Looking at the MSFT definition or clustering, they describe two kinds of clusters:

    • network load balancing clusters ("[the type ..] that distributes and load balances network connections among servers, providing high availability and scalability for stateless TCP/IP applications and services.").
      Note the explicit restriction to "stateless".

    • server clusters ("[the type..] that the Cluster service implements. Server clusters are characterized by high availability.)
      Note they mention availability but not performance.
    ObJoke: MSFT renamed "Wolfpack" to "Server Cluster API", probably because they were sick of people describing it as "two dogs fucking" (As in: two beasts stuck together, pulling in opposite directions and howling in pain).