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

Too expensive my arse

[Umbral Blot]

Hasn't running "parallel HPC applications aimed at users working on complex computations" traditionally been done under Unix, and Linux as well. Seeing how Linux is free it's hard to see how "it has been too expensive", or "too difficult" (since unlike your home user the people running these systems are rocket scientists, I am sure a little command line use doesn't stump them).

Re:Too expensive my arse

[supun]

Your response is the same as mine.

When I worked a Motorola, and was part of their LUG, one of the members was talking about a Beowulf cluster they made. Like bad management, they ordered a bunch of desktop PC they couldn't use, and no one authorized their return. So they sat around in unopened boxes until his team decided to make a Beowulf cluster so they could model the electron flow around traces in an 8 layer circuit board before they had them actually pressed.

Each prototype board cost around $10,000 to create. And after that you have to test to make sure the electron field, around a trace, does not affect another trace. Manually it took a long time and is prone to errors. So if there is a problem, it's another $10,000, and another, until you get it correct.

With this Beowulf cluster they could model the electron flow around a trace and then only make one prototype, saving a ton of money and time. And this was all done with an ISO off the net and a bunch of forgotten computers.

Re:And for us mere mortals...

[Demetril]

Considering I work at one of the companies listed in the article MS is working with, and all our HPC clustering is working with linux, and will be for the coming future, I think this is primarily just a PR attempt. I don't even think we're remotely considered running anything on windows for our tasks.

Re:The First???

[Anonymous Coward]

I did manage to flummox the professor with the following question (I'm being serious here!):

Why does a 256 or 512-node computational cluster need a copy of Windows Media Player on each machine?

It was then that I realized that MS's approach to operating systems targeted to different applications is not to strip anything out, but to add layer upon layer of extra functionality to their basic "home computing" OS.

Yes, friends, their Windows 2000 computational cluster software does indeed ship with Media Player.

I can't speak of SQL Server or other variants: does anyone have a clue?

compliance to standards?

[WinEveryGame]

Per Microsoft document:

"Microsoft Message Passing Interface (MS-MPI) implementation is fully compatible with the reference MPICH2"

I guess given the fact that Microsoft is pathetically behind Linux when it comes to high performance computing, they may actually play by the rules here.

Anyone has an insight on this one? Do they have a API lock-in strategy here as well?

Heh!

[jd]

Microsoft delivered the keynote speech for the Supercomputer conference SC|05 in Seattle last year and had a huge stand in the main hallway. Most people were walking straight past it and were gathering round the stands offering free Linux CDs. (I would really like to see at least one of the BSDs to add something like bproc - Linux has some amazing capabilities and those can and are used in many applications, but NetBSD has better I/O throughput and there are many cases where cluster applications are I/O-bound rather than CPU-bound or feature-bound.)

Microsoft's MPI implementation is, if I understand their materials correctly, based on MPICH (a BSD-licensed Open Source product) with some in-house fine tuning. MPICH is a good reference implementation but is not terribly fast and is getting to be long in the tooth. Far as I know, it doesn't have much in the way of fault tolerance in it, either. LAMPI and OpenMPI are built for speed (although I've found OpenMPI has room for substantial improvement) and have some fault tolerance support. So, they don't seem to be using an amazing architecture.

Last, but by no means least, Microsoft's freebies were limited to an Opteron-specific Windows 2003 Cluster Edition beta and a cookie. By comparison, many others had booklets on what their products did, papers on the theoretical work being done, working demos (the molecular modeler with forced feedback was amazing) and some highly knowledgeable geeks to answer detailed technical questions.

Microsoft may - someday - be an interesting player in the cluster market. Right now, though, they really don't seem to get what it is all about. I'm not trying to bash Microsoft here, they really don't have a product that is useful for the high-performance market, and seem to have the wrong libraries and interfaces for using the servers in a load-balancing, fail-over or distributed storage environment. This isn't to say the other vendors were perfect - I saw many areas that were horribly inefficient and poorly implemented - but rather that Microsoft would have done better to have come back from the show and re-thought what it was that they wanted the Cluster Edition to do.

Re:What the?

[killjoe]

While MS has had success with it's servers it has not been able to achieve the same monopoly status in that market that is has on the desktop and the office software markets. Since then they have tried repetedly to attain dominance in other markets by dumping software for free, forcing downloads with windows, paying customers to use them etc. Despite all that they have not been able to get better then third place in anything. Xbox, SQL server, sharepoint, great plains (what ever it's called now), their CRM software, etc are doing at best third place in the market. Other products have been utter failures MSN, MS at work, webtv, money, works, and several other web sites which they have ditched all got shot down in flames after sucking up tons of money.

MS has cleary lost a lot of it's mojo. They are not the MS of old. Sure they can still sink billions into products which have no market share till kingdom come but that may not be enough anymore. Alas MS has that luxury due their monopoly level profits on office and windows and other companies don't have that luxury. That's definately a disadvantage for any other company in IT. Still though MS is so incompetent that they are unable get SQL server to any better position then third place. They have to pay people to use IIS. I mean what does that say about them? Is that the mark of a juggernaut? I don't think so. I think it's a stink of desparation.

Finally I don't think MS has in it's heart to build products anymore. All they talk about is advertising. They are clearly in the process of transforming their company to be able to deliver advertising to windows users. I don't think things like cluster server are high priority at MS. It's just a last minute entry into the marketplace to try and halt the growth of Linux there. It won't work and MS just doesn't care all that much about it anyway.

Re:The First???

[Bert64]

Does it also need a hard disk in every machine? Imagine all the extra heat produced by 500 superfluous hard drives. All the clusters i've built have been diskless, and booted from the network (or from a floppy, i did produce such a ghetto-cluster from old hardware once as an example)

Re:Absurdity can be profitable"

[pwhysall]

Only sort of.

The front end web servers are IIS. The business logic is all Java, Solaris and Oracle.

Re:MS and serious engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

From http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/dec0 5/12-09SmithBurtonPR.mspx

REDMOND, Wash. -- Dec. 9, 2005 -- Microsoft Corp. today announced that Burton J. Smith is joining the company as a technical fellow. Smith joins Microsoft as a proven leader in the computer industry, serving most recently as chief scientist and member of the board of directors for Cray Inc. Smith will focus on working with existing groups within Microsoft to help expand the company's efforts in the areas of parallel and high-performance computing. He will report directly to Craig Mundie, chief technical officer and senior vice president for Advanced Strategies and Policy.