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Windows Cluster Edition
eth8686 writes "Microsoft is aiming to have its first cluster version of Windows ready in time for a supercomputing conference this fall." From the article: "The next version of the Compute Cluster edition will extend to Microsoft's .Net programming infrastructure, letting developers write software using the C# programming language, he said."
a thousand blue screens a thousand times faster!
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
What is the fundamental difference with the "cluster version" of Windows? OS X clusters just fine and there are no "special editions" other than a few software additions that hardly count as a different OS. And Linux requires very little to get it in a cluster compute configuration.
.Net programming infrastructure, letting developers write software using the C# programming language, he said.
.Net is easier and more secure.
However, Theimer said the cluster version will include some restrictions on how the version can be used to prevent companies from performing standard Web hosting or other functions.
Wow. When you compare this to the standard capability of OS X, it seems like a real rip off. You get reduced functionality. Why?
The first version will reproduce many basic features of Linux clusters, Theimer said.
Then why not use Linux?
The next version of the Compute Cluster edition will extend to Microsoft's
Ah, I see why now. But what impetus is there to use the first version if this is coming in the second version? Kinda like Windows 1.0 I guess.
Although such code runs more slowly than C programs running directly on Windows,
Aauuummm........
writing programs in C# that run atop
Says who? It certainly is/will be easier but more secure is something that has yet to be proven. To date, the track record is not impressive.
Often, Theimer said, it's more important to have a program as soon as possible than to have it running at peak performance, he said.
Ah, the fast food approach to software design. Don't you know that stuff makes you code obese and causes an early demise necessitating frequent checkups?
A third version will include developer improvements to ease programming on clusters. It also will include high-level management tools and will help customers integrate their high-performance computing equipment with the rest of their infrastructure, he said.
This is going to be in the third version of the release? I guess they have been looking at Xgrid, Pooch and other software and it will take them two versions to integrate what others have already got.
Seriously, Microsoft. Please come up with some innovative features and give us something that no other vendor offers or in a package so slick that we cannot help ourselves, but to purchase the Microsoft solution. This is nothing that is not offered elsewhere in the market, but has the appearance of locking us further into a Microsoft paradigm.
You guys have the right idea in that cluster computing is going to be a bigger market than it currently is, but you have to be more hungry and learn again how to ship software that creates desire and meets your customers needs in a timely fashion.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I didn't "see it coming", but it's not unexpected. When was the last time you heard "Windows" and "cluster" in a sentence without some vulgarity attached? Meanwhile, Apple's been in the news with its clusters and is catering to the distributed computing with software like Xgrid and Xsan, not forgetting support for distributed compile in Xcode.
Microsoft is behind on this, and they're now playing catch-up. I suspect we'll see a few cluster-related items from them in the next year.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Windows Cluster Fuck Edition?
There, it's been said.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Imagine having to reboot a whole cluster after the BSOD.
... Beosloth cluster of those.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of........
No, wait, it's just too terrible to comprehend.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
does it run Linux?
If you're spending $millions on a cluster, it's more useful to spend the money you'd spend licensing MS software on more computers for your cluster.
cost benefit analysis.
Every edition of Windows I've ever tried has been a pretty reliable cluster-f*ck, where's the news here ;)
Let's see... half the resources, twice the security risk and ten times the price???
Where do I sign up to throw my IT budget down the drain?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
...which is what they built DBSOD (Distributed Blue Screen of Death) on top of. You can't call it windows without BSOD. DBSOD over MPI finally gives windows customers what they've been waiting for.
Too bad there aren't any "I'd hate to be the guy calling up Microsoft to activate all those copies of windows" jokes.
But if there were, "I'd hate to be the guy calling up Microsoft to activate all those copies of windows"
I work in the field (sysadmin for a 800 node cluster), and this is pretty laughable. Microsoft is desperate for the "street cred" of being able to handle high performance computing. Sun, IBM, Dell, HP, Apple all have it. Microsoft doesn't.
If they want so much as the proverbial foot in the door, they must 1) release all (as in *ALL*) of the source code under a GPL or BSD license, 2) make it available for free to all comers, 3) have user's 3rd-party apps (ISE-TCAD, CFDRC, etc) ported, and 4) provide a knowledge base equal to (All Linux + BSD hackers) * Google.
And that only gets their foot in the door.
It references the original "coming out" article which states:
So now I'm curious... Are they selling to managers, who use the windows i/f and want to think they can "get the job done" on the new server cluster? Or are they trying to suggest that no one in corp uses un*x systems?
I think what Microsoft really needs to do is come up with a line of kitchen appliances. I for one would buy them. I mean, hey, maybe then I could learn how to cook! Imagine having the same interface on the fridge and the coffee maker! Oh sure, some whiny liberal will probably complain that they don't NEED the percolate button for their ice cream, but this is America! Choice is what made this country great!
Note: /. may edit out the
tags.This tagline brought to you by 1500 monkeys in just under 17 years.
From the article: Theimer said; "We want to be competitive with something like Red Hat."
That shouldn't be a problem. At these prices Windows 2003 is already cheaper. It's only when you start adding CALs that Microsoft gets more expensive and people won't be buying a lot of CALs for a supercomputing cluster.
*Sits back*
:(
In Soviet Russia, M...ahh fuck it.
Imagine a Beow...bah never mind
BAHAHAHAHAA - Cluster...baaahhahah - oh you guys are serious - Sorry
Here's a top 500 server that runs windows. Buy a clue thanks.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Quoted: "We have developed Windows for Clusters for those computers with significant processing power, but not enough to run Longhorn" a Microsoft spokesperson said.
Cluster != huge expensive computer engine. With software like clusterKNOPPIX (I was just playing with this today), it's really easy to take all of the computers in a research lab (that are already connected to the internet) and turn them into a load-sharing cluster. This is different from a super-computer, although you can presumably get some of the benefit if you are also running MPI (I haven't tried that locally yet). In case you don't understant the purpose of such a cluster it's so that when I want to launch 100 simulations (say to do a parameter sweep, which is embarrassingly parallel), I can launch them all from my local computer and openMosix will automagically distribute the workload across all computers in our lab.
Personally, I'm glad Windows is getting in the game, just like I'm glad when the US gets competition in the space program. Competition, it's a good thing (tm). :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
C# is a winner for these kinds of applications: it is far simpler and less error prone than C++,
For a community that still uses Fortran? I don't think that's their biggest concern.
Sun really screwed this up with Java: if they had taken the scientific and numerical communities seriously and added the necessary features to Java, Java could be the undisputed winner in this market.
Standard Java requires IEEE floating point, so Java programs run the same everywhere. A community that used Crays (which were renown for their lousy, but fast, floating point) doesn't want their programs to run everywhere with precise but slow mathematics; they want their programs to run on their hardware with the hardware floating point as fast as possible.
ultimately turned into a bloated web applications platform.
Isn't that what Java is? It sounds like you're asking Java to service an audience completely different from what it was designed for.
C# is a winner for these kinds of applications: it is far simpler and less error prone than C++,
For a community that still uses Fortran? Not my biggest concern.
I don't see either Java or C# offering the raw speed that the scientific community wants. Speed and predictability come first, not portability or security (scientific code never needs to run as root and frequently runs on computers disconnected from the internet.)
...at the development lab already running it!
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
I followed the link, then downward several levels without seeing any claim this was ever in the top 500. Perhaps I just missed the text. But there were pricing and offers of help, nonetheless, the claims seemed to be circumspect given the performance level of your claim.
Is this my failure, or is your link just FUD too?
You can make a turtle fly at speeds breaking the sound barrier aswell.
Is the turtle designed for that?
Yes.
Is it capable of that?
It's in the Top500 list, isn't it? If it wasn't capable, it wouldn't be doing it. Simple as that.
Please answer those questions
Just did.
So, basically, you implied Windows isn't good enough to run as a Top500 server, someone pointed out that it already does, and now you're defending it by saying, "Even though it is, it's still not good enough?"
This kind of crap really makes the community look immature.
Then use what many in the high performance compupting field do: Fortran. There is at least one advanced C++ development project I know of that has Fortran as its core deep in the bowels of the FFT routines... for efficiency reasons. It's just plain faster.
Plus, how many buffer overflow exploits have you seen recently on Fortran programs? :-)
-- This
If you take a look at the worlds largest supercomputing project, it uses a distributed computing system, and it's for the most part os agnostic, but, the target software has not been compiled for _all_ availble platforms. For reference, check out seti@home. Granted, this project is of a scale that it deserved a customized message architecture, so it's quite unique overall.
Clusters in general are utilized to solve problems in a distributed manner. In the scientific community, MPI is used, and in the web hosting world, clusters are used for load balancing and high availability. The reality is, both of these tasks can be very application specific, and operating system agnostic. In theory, there is no reason a properly written MPI application cannot be deployed on a cluster consisting of half linux, and half windows machines. In reality, such applications tend to rely on artifacts of having identical nodes, and it would be a lot of extra work maintaining a code base such that it can be arbitrarily launched on both platforms. Its far more efficient to tune it up for a single platform, and just use the same platform across the entire cluster.
In the load balancing world, same issues will surface. There is really no reason you cant use a mix of windows and linux based apache systems to back a load balancing cluster. Again, it would be a LOT of extra work managing the mixed configuration, and ultimately, that gets kind of pointless.
Out in the real world, clustering did focus in on linux rather early in the game, because it's open source, hence the folks doing clustering had the option to actually make changes to accomodate thier clusters. There are numerous models to choose from, ranging from a really simple MPI implementation where each machine is virtually independant, and simply passing messages via some high level api, all the way down to the OpenMosix implementation where each machine in the cluster just has the appearance of 'yet another processor' on the overall host. In the former case, applications need to be custom written for the cluster, in the latter case, no modifications are required to applications. Two vastly different architectures, that both fall within the buzzword 'cluster', but are so far removed from each other, there is no similarity other than the fact both use a lot of computers.
A move by microsoft to produce a 'cluster centric' variation of windows actually validates the linux cluster more than anything else can in the marketplace. It demonstrates clearly that the cluster buzzword is gaining enough traction in the management mindset that microsoft needs a presence in that area.
It'll be interesting to see what the final form of the product really is. If it's just a set of gui configurators to manage an MPI system, it's really nothing that couldn't have been done as a third party add-on, and an admission that no third parties were interested in tackling this high end portion of the marketplace on the windows platform.
If the clustering system turns out to be a full process/thread level migration system, akin to the mosix implementation, it'll have a lot of potential, simply because applications do not need to be re-written in order to take advantage of the cluster, assuming ofc, the application already has enough smarts to distribute it's workload amongst multiple processors. the last time I checked (and it's been quite a while), excel is not smart enought to distribute it's calcs amongst multiple processors, something to do with the single threaded nature of serial calculation.
The final proof of technical issues will come over the next few years, and it's going to be an interesting thing to watch. There is going to be a significant amount of support business generated in migrating clusters from one platform to the
Am I the only one that read this and think Theimer and MS have no clue what clusters are designed to do? Using a spreadsheet to do lots of number crunching is an application problem. You are using an application in ways that it was not intended. That's far different than an OS performance issue where your application is limited by what the OS can do and need some way to tweak the OS to perform better. How is MS Cluster going to solve this spreadsheet problem? Is that spreadsheet going to run across hundreds of machines? My solution would be not to a use a spreadsheet in the first place. There must be some other more suitable application.
I may be cynical but I see this as another ploy by MS to expand their revenue by bloat. As their software gets more bloated, the average consumer will be forced to use newer and more powerful OS to run it. I'm sure that MS will be tickled in 2010 when you need a 64 way processor just to run BackOffice 2009 so they can charge your company for a license for each of the the 64 processors.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.