Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 Released

grammar fascist writes "According to an Information Week article, on Friday Microsoft released Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003." From the article: "The software is Microsoft's first to run parallel HPC applications aimed at users working on complex computations... 'High-performance computing technology holds great potential for expanding opportunities... but until now it has been too expensive and too difficult for many people to use effectively,' said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of [Microsoft's] Server and Tools Business unit, in a statement."

Comments

2003=2006?

[John_Booty]

It takes some serious marketing balls (and/or or a lack of marketing brains) to release a product branded "2003" when we're already halfway through 2006.

I actually have to applaud the naming move; it accurately lets everybody know that this product is based on Windows Server 2003. It would have been quite misleading if they'd passed it off as " Windows Compute Cluster Server 2006".

Wonder what the meetings between the marketing team and the engineering team were like for this one. :)

Absurdity can be profitable"

[asky]

"...but until now it has been too expensive and too difficult for many people to use effectively."

I know many people take exception to that remark. But not everyone knows how to build Beowulf clusters.Some of us thought it was insane when, in the 90s, Microsoft said they were going to enter the server market. Yet here they are. And who in their right minds would run their web services out of IIS? (Then again, Apache now runs on Windows.)

The point is, just because the idea is absurd doesn't mean it won't happen. If corporate consolidations put support for technical computing under the IT department, and support for Linux is considered toodifficult for the IT folks, it's only a matter of time before the decree to port technical computing applications to Windows.

The fact is, M$ has access to software vendors, hardware vendors, and large customers in ways that Linux companies do not. They can create markets where they shouldn't be justified (unless you think all operating systems really require anti-virus software).

I'd love to be wrong about this. But I've finally come to the conclusion that sound technical judgement does not stop absurdity from happening.

Another choice: Rocks Clusters

[joib]

Another, perhaps even more popular Linux cluster distro is Rocks Clusters.

While I don't have personal experience with OSCAR, Rocks is really good. These days, doing a cluster with a "normal" distro is insane. I think MS will have to think long and hard before they come up with something equally easy to install and manage as Rocks.

That being said, I think MS is not targeting Win CCS at academic supercomputing, which has a long history of using Unix/Linux, but rather they want to expand HPC to business customers who otherwise have a 100 % MS environment.

Missing the point a bit?

[nixascyborg]

The idea behind Windows clusters being 'cheaper' has nothing to do with the individual price of the OS (versus, for instance, free Linux); the named price is low, not free, but that is not the point of your savings with a Windows HPC cluster. The point is that most programmers work on a Windows platform and have experience with it. And if you program with/for Windows and, for instance VS 2005, MS counts on the effort of building programs that run on HPC to be considerably less effort than it is on a Linux (or Xgrid) cluster. Making existing Windows 'hits' clusterable (i heard mention somewhere of image, movie and 3d processing software) is easier because of this too; making it work on other clusters is a pain because there you would have to work in an environment you are not used too. Like all things with MS; they count on the familiarity and ease of use to make this all run. That is what makes it cheaper; you cannot get a Linux HPC programmer and if you find him/her he will be godawful expensive; for WinHPC it will just be 'another VS programmer' of which there are a lot. Look for MS to add testing, debugging and development aids for HPC in the upcoming versions of VS.

Re:Absurdity can be profitable

[mikeb]

"But I've finally come to the conclusion that sound technical judgement does not stop absurdity from happening"

Something that the majority of Slashdot readers seem not to understand (and with justification) is that purchasing decisions are not rational.

A basic training course on sales techniques will, unless it's totally bogus, emphasise the fact that purchasing is based on emotion, not rationality. Some 80-90% of all sales are emotion-driven and then sometimes post-facto justified by selectively picking facts.

As the world becomes a more complex place and huge amounts of information become available to prospective purchasers there's a kind of paradox emerging that will horrify economists who cling to the theory that perfect markets are based on rational purchasers with perfect information, because the reverse is happening.

Most purchasers are not analytic personalities. People who hang around Slashdot underestimate how much they have (in general) honed their own analytic skills with years of practice while most middle-tier managers in corporates never did. For those non-analytic people, being asked to rationally evaluate a mass of facts and statistics is a SCARY proposition. That's not how they got their job, they did that by looking good in a suit and licking backsides more or less assiduously whilst being ok at judging how the politics are shaping up. Their skillset is way different from yours and they react differently.

The more information you make available to those people, the less they are likely to use and the more they will look around for 'safe' decisions. This will be especially true if their promotion prospects may depend on the outcome. THEY ARE NOT SPENDING THEIR OWN MONEY, it's the company's. Their decision will be based on the likelihood of retaining their job or getting promoted before their mistakes are discovered.

So, figure for yourself. On the one hand some technical guy they distrust because he's smart can 'download an ISO from the interweb and build a cluster myself' or 'buy from Microsoft'.

The first bit of irrational figuring will be 'the Microsoft stuff costs tens of thousands but the geek says it's free - that does not compute, he must be wrong'. The second will be 'if it goes wrong who will get the blame'. Guess the outcome of that one for yourself.

The result is fairly predictable IF you understand the parameters. Microsoft's marketing does understand where it's operating and will be well aware that its customer base is heavily loaded with irrational people. Most likely they are hearing squeals from that customer base asking where Microsoft's compute cluster solution is because 'we want to buy one'. It would be foolish not to give them one surely?

Actually they don't but

[crovira]

now that super computing has been turned into clustering and there are lots of people doing it (like it hit >$x billion,) it has apppeared on microsoft's radar.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, the terrain's already covered by Linux and those systems are a moving target with cost-benefit lines that Microsoft CAN'T possibly over take. (The software is $-free and open source and the users WANT collaboration.)

Its a technological death trap for Microsoft. (I can just hear the SNAP. :-)