Virtual clustering

S

sum ASM required

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 27, 2002
Messages
397
I hope this is the right place to do this, I figured it would be the best place. Right now I work at a University and my professor and I were trying to think of a way to make a cluster without making a cluster and using fast machines which aren't always being used, if that makes sense. Basically, we were thinking of making an image that would run on a virtual machine program on any system, either windows or linux which is mainly used here. The main thing we were contemplating was the choice of the virtual machine software, because of speed, and the lack of dedication of a computer to the cluster, more or less. We want it to run in the background and use the resources when they aren't really being used so that it usually won't slow down a computer that is being used (so probably mostly at night), like a process/service kind of like SETI or something. The best Idea I came up so far was making a barebones installation and using Colinux for windows machines running mosix stuff, and then for linux I wasn't quite sure. My professor wants to use Bochs on every PC, and hopes that a simple enough installation won't take up much resources, and just do the same thing.

Hopefully that was clear. Pipe dream or possible or just not worth it?
 
Lost me once you get into nix.

VMware has great free products for running the virtual machines. Runs on either Linux/Windows platforms.

Can to the PXE thing for virtual, never got it working myself but did not try for more than 60 seconds either.

Part I can't follow is how to get a virtual OS platform to run with only free resources of the host machine. Near as I can tell the VMware products will take from the guest OS all they can get when needed. Takes a certain amount of overhead (not much) just to keep the machines running not doing anything. Have 3 virtual machines running at 20% CPU usage, the guest PC will be at ~70% (overhead also) CPU usage.

Too late in the day, by brain is cooked. Good luck and let us know what you end up with.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top