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Microsoft Finally up for Distributed Computing?
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."
now we have to worry about the blue wall of death.
They'll be secretly using your CPU cycles to compile their latest version of Windows.
I guess Microsoft is imagining a Be-- stop! put down that bat!
Windows is an overly-bloated OS which is very GUI-oriented and is not modular or flexible for cluster node usage. Processing nodes usually don't even have a monitor or keyboard, much less a GUI and a mouse. Windows isn't much use there. Nor can you strip out the parts you don't need, or customize the kernel for performance. Plus, Microsoft's incredibly expensive and anal licensing makes a Windows cluster not worth the effort or money. I mean, Linux's licensing cost is 0, and 0 scales infinitely ;)
Say what you like about Linux "not ready for the desktop", but Linux (and *nix in general) totally rules the clustering arena.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
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?
Does this make any sense? The rest of the summary is equally nonsensical.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Gridengine just added Windows support:
- Windows XP and 2000 (December 2004 availability)
http://www.sun.com/software/gridware/
Gridengine's source can be downloaded from:
http://gridengine.sunsource.net/
Just plug an unpatched XP box into the internet. It will be part of the worlds largest grid computer in less than 2 minutes.
It will also hum the tune Zombie Rock!
There are millions of Windows machines out there participating in a distributed SPAM relaying network.
I imagine if Microsoft 'enahances' Windows to do this even easier, it'll make it even easier for spammers to write the next-generation spamming-joe-jobbing apps.
Kudos, Microsoft!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
When you want to do large computations the biggest cost is the hardware. So you want to make optimal use of your hardware by using software optimized for that hardware. Rewriting networkcard software can give you improvements of 10-20% for your specific application.
On linux you can remove interrupts from the kernel if your app only needs polling. Stuff like that will never be possible with a closed source solution.
Lots of ppl stop using solaris cause of this.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
distributed computing happens at the application layer. Thus if you can run something like an MPI library on windows you have the basis for efficient distributed computing. All you need is a scheduler and launcher to be able to launch distributed launch an application across the net. But virtually all of these are daemons not strictly part of the OS. So that level of system independent abstraction exists already so this should not be too difficult.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
...but my SETI@home screen saver is one of the most stable apps on my XP machine. It certainly doesn't qualify as "grid" computing, but it feels awfully big some days.
Of note: I've got some Win2K web servers running in a native WLBS load balanced rig, and those machines have been doing swell for four years now. They talk to a cluster of SQL servers, but that clustering really doesn't count... it's more like hot fail-over. The native load balancing of the web servers, though, has been pretty tight and has scaled very easily, at least within my mid-market universe.
I know, I'm just asking for it with this post. Just wanted folks to know that it's possible to push a couple $million of holiday e-commerce through some pretty cheap white boxes running MS's stuff. And yes, my cheap admin help is glad there's a GUI for some of the chores they don't do every day. All right, flame me now. But you have to do it from a command prompt.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
> Seems to me this is a deliberate leak to create uncertainty in customer's minds and block any adoption of *nix for grid computing.
That, or they're priming consumers to accept the idea that it will take a whole rack of computers to run the next version of Windows.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
Q. What do you call a cluster of Windows machines?
A. A botnet.
wow imagine a beowulf cluster of these... oh wait...
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.").
- server clusters ("[the type..] that the Cluster service implements. Server clusters are characterized by high availability.)
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).Note the explicit restriction to "stateless".
Note they mention availability but not performance.
The NT kernel is well designed.
The rest of the OS has way to much backwards compatibility to be able to strip things out.
Linux can run on clusters because you can install only those chunks that you need. in Windows every processor would also have to run the entire GUI. Even if it is never used.
Why do you think Longhorn is getting a full command line shell setup?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Seems to me that the open source platforms are well and truly set to crucify MS in this market. Why pay for a platform when you don't have to?
Last time I checked, Windows in all its multifarious versions has no way to run a program in a sandbox, such that this program is incapable of DOS'ng the PC by opening tons of windows, file handles, memory blocks, processes, etc.... If the system isnt designed fromt he ground up to be compartmentalized, stable, and secure, IMHO there's little change of grafting all these qualities on a decade down the road.
Summary of every post in this topic:
This is bad. M$ is evil evil. *Cough* . Bloated, FUD, GUI, copied MAC, FUD, [nonsensical, nonsensical] bloated, *Cough*, I'm waisting my life ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H. I can't believe people are so stupid to belive such M$$ lame FUD, propoganda [ nonsensical... ] Blue screen, Blue Screen!. Linux good. Why are M$$$ so stupid? Ha Ha, I'm so much smarter. *Cough* Blue Screen! this is like Clippy! [nonsensical, nonsensical], really crap. Mac good. Bad idea, unstable. Blue Screen! Open Source, Open Source! [ nonsensical... ]. M$ Bob. Zombie. Blue Screen, Blue Screen! Security ^H^H^H^H^H^H *cough*. IE, ahhh! ahhh! Blue screen. Stupid.
In this case, Mac OS X is sitting on top of a UNIX kernel -- a modified FreeBSD. Which means all of those parts aren't GUI oriented, and you get all of the same benefits of a UNIX with all of the eye candy that Apple knows how to make work well.
Windows seems to have been built with a model that expects everything to want to be GUI based and it includes a lot of stuff geared towards that. As has been pointed out elsewhere, Windows seems to be taking networking and other stuff as add-ons without having been accounted for in the first place. Though that's probably changing somewhat over time.
In the case of OS/X, it will happily do both functions without saddling the non-GUI stuff with extra baggage.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how insignificant," said the master.
"Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
"It is," came the reply.
"Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
"It is even in a video game," said the master.
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The lesson is over for today," he said.
-- "The Tao of Programming"
That is *not* a cluster. It's a load balancing server.
MS like to call it a cluster because it makes them sound 'good', but really it's crap.
Windows already has distributed computing build in, with transaction support which controls cross-machine/process transactions, it's available in every windows box (2000/XP/2003). Furthermore it has object-level security settings, based on roles, integrated in for example Active Directory so you can control which user can access/run which object.
:-/
'Grid computing!!!111'... it's a buzzword. The technology is already available for many years, however not a lot of software uses it, if you look at the many many applications available.
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.
I don't know how much 'ReeprFlame' knows about windows, but it can't be a lot.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
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.
Flamebait? Please mods, this is the reason slashdot is losing readership. It's difficult to have a decent discussion, when all opposing views to the group opinion (right or wrong) are essentially censored down to obscurity.
Windows has proven time and again to be designed for stand-alone situation. All network and security add-ons have shown to be just that; add-ons..
huh? COM+ is designed to be a cross-machine/process object layer with security build in PER OBJECT, even per interface. Role based, AD controlled.
Stand alone? Add-ons? ever looked closely at windows 2000 or even NT 4? No, not the shell, the core OS.
Distributed computing simply isn't part of the base design. Morphing Windows into something it isn't will once again be a task for their marketing department, not engineering.
You have definitely totally no clue whatsoever, and with you the moderators who modded you 'insightful'. 'Bullshit' would have been more like it.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
in Windows every processor would also have to run the entire GUI. Even if it is never used.
No. First of all you can set cmd.exe as the shell instead of explorer.exe, second of all, if you don't hook up a monitor or log in, the shell is swapped out pretty fast, and doesn't get any cpu cycles.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
This is a load of horseshit.
First: The WindowsNT line (WinNT, Win2k, Win2k3 and WinXP) isn't descended from DOS.
Second: WindowsNT had a rich file and process permissions and auditing model baked in at a low level that exceeded (and may still exceed) what Linux has today. The problem is that the default OS config was and is relatively permissive.
A lot is TWO WORDS. Why is it so hard for you to do the jobs you are paid to do?
Are their DOS only based utilities to edit registry settings? since everything in windows is configured from the registry how do you edit those settings?
Yes, they're in the resourcekit for windows 2000/2003/XP (and a lot of other command line tools)
But you don't have to do this, you can for example remotely login using terminal services for admin usage, even if the server doesn't have monitor,mouse and keyboard attached. But if you want to config windows using a commandline, you can.
rescanning hardware changes can be triggered by a reboot.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Ahem, (tap, tap, tap):
i cl eID/228/228.html
1 30 960195/102-3088378-9911361?v=glance
c k_ Compcon.doc
Clustering Solutions for Windows NT:
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/Art
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
http://research.microsoft.com/users/gray/Wolfpa
I can't be the only one that had this book.
~hylas
No, I don't think that's the reason. Metamod takes care of clueless mods. I don't know about others, but the main reason why I read much less Slashdot than I used to is that trolls have been effectively defanged.
Slashdot was a really funny site to read when one could find humorous, although often off-topic, gems of internet wisdom inside. Most of the posts that get modded "funny" today would be better classified as "trite" or "corny". Today, the people who made Slashdot what it was have been banned. No more Natalie Portman, no more goatse ascii, no more anything that's even remotely diferent from the mainstream media.
Well, for mainstream media we have Geraldo and Larry King, thanks, we don't need Slashdot for that. For discussions on current technology news there are gadzillions of sites in the net. What made Slashdot truly unique and fun to read were the trolls, and they have been effectively eliminated.
The troll-elimination effort has gone way too far, it's harming the technical discussions. Last week I tried to post a small snippet of perl code in my comment. It was rejected by the lameness filter, because it looked "too much like ascii art"!!!... Well, for mature and well-balanced technical discussions, posting the occasional five-line perl code is invaluable. If you don't want to see the occasional ascii-goatse, you *do* have some ways to protect your sensitive retinas, did you know that, editors?
Well, yes, I agree that the "flamebait" moderation hurts Slashdot. So, here is my own constructive proposal: when giving mod points, let only *ONE* point be negative. You get five points, you must mod four posts up, and only one post down. So you must choose really carefully which one is a troll or flamebait or overrated or redundant. It's not only the excess of flamebait moderations that's bringing Slashdot down, it's a general excess of negative moderation.
Reg.exe is shipped as part of the OS starting with XP.
So, which would you rather have as a desktop - Windows 3.0 or last year's linux distro? More relevantly, who is going to be further ahead in the NEXT 10 years?
Microsoft has lost momentum, and is now reduced to trying to play catch-up in terms of features.
In terms of ease of install, and ease of maintenance, and ease of updating, linux distros win (just did an upgrade at the office from SuSE 9.1 to 9.2 Friday - almost 6 gigs of software brought up-to-date painlessly ... impossible with Windows where every service pack and update is feared for what it will break).
The problems with Windows are three-fold
- the core has too much crud that was grafted into it that seemed like a good idea at the time (performance, etc) but shows its age
... there's some really OLD stuff in there that can't be rewritten without breaking too many other things. Their designers have admitted as much. Look at the way that numerous Microsoft products use undisclosed windows api calls, then they can't modify/fix something related because those calls, while not part of the public interface, have to be maintained because removing them will cause their software to puke. They end up having to write more code to handle more special cases ... over and over and over
- Windows target market is to be all things to all people - Gates himself has said "I only want our fair share of the market - and that fair share is 100%". In trying to be everything, it is neither fish nor fowl.
- Reputation - Microsoft and Windows both have a terrible reputation, in terms of public relations (convicted monopolist, all-grasping with their "passport", etc...) and technology (everyone knows what the "Blue Screen of Death" means).
Look at how long its' taken Windows to get to where it is today (21 years + 3 in development = 24 years). Linux is half that. Wanna bet that 10 years from now Windows is still on almost every desktop? I doubt it.Linux, on the other hand, has no undisclosed api.
Linux, on the other hand, is a kernel. It's agnostic in the sense that it is up to YOU as a user/developer/distributor to do what you want with it.
The BSDs and Linux have a much better reputation. People don't use Windows because they want to, but because they have to. But that's changing.
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."
I arrived a bit late on the scene to advise you guys, but here goes: If you are going to have a derogatory thread about M$ and how lame they are, um, get your terminology right first!
Parallel =! Distributed
Distributed =! Parallel
These are two different things and demonstrates how this board has a tendancy to go off a bit half-cocked over what M$ does and their capabilities.
What is even sadder, those speaking seriously of problems with Windows 95 (BSoD) having anything remotely to do with enterprise level systems today. Being an old-timer BSD and Linux user, I can safely say I've seen a share of pings of death and other BS with every OS. Sometimes, it becomes time to just let all that childish BS go, ya know? Implement what businesses need and works.