The CEO of cluster software vendor Scali takes issue with Microsoft’s clustering options. Scali is demonstrating a new, major upgrade to its Scali Manage and Scali MPI Connect suites at next week’s LinuxWorld Conference & Expo.
The CEO of cluster software vendor Scali takes issue with Microsoft’s clustering options. Scali is demonstrating a new, major upgrade to its Scali Manage and Scali MPI Connect suites at next week’s LinuxWorld Conference & Expo.
The main reason there aren’t many Windows clusters is something he pointed out, Many parallel applications are not available on Windows.
Plus, didn’t I read somewhere that said Windows clustering was only for departments and not super computer type stuff?
Windows clusters are more for Failover and High Availability, not super computing.
“Many parallel applications are not available on Windows.”
Almost all of those applications are some form of Fortran code with parallel directives (OpenMP) and or PVM or MPI.
So, those applications are only a compile away from being “available on Windows”.
“Plus, didn’t I read somewhere that said Windows clustering was only for departments and not super computer type stuff?”
That depends on the cluster. There’s no reason why it couldn’t be used. The use of Linux for this type of thing is based on two things: (1) inertia and (2) cost. Comparing it to an offering from a company like Scali negates the cost argument.
Porting parallel Fortran code isn’t always just some walk in the park as you seem to suggest.
The biggest issue is the scalability of Windows vs Linux. I can network a machine to run a small Linux install and it will operate perfectly as a node. With Windows, you pretty much still have all the overhead of the OS plus all the problems. This is why Linux is everywhere, it can be tailored to fit any situation.
“Porting parallel Fortran code isn’t always just some walk in the park as you seem to suggest.”
It generally has been for me. Perhaps you’re doing something wrong or using an inferior compiler. Real parallel code using OpenMP directives is *compiler*, not OS dependent.
“The biggest issue is the scalability of Windows vs Linux. I can network a machine to run a small Linux install and it will operate perfectly as a node. With Windows, you pretty much still have all the overhead of the OS plus all the problems. This is why Linux is everywhere, it can be tailored to fit any situation”
That’s not a “scalability issue”. In fact, this doesn’t really make sense. A cluster node is merely a networked machine – you still have all that “OS overhead” even with Linux. That isn’t why Linux is “everywhere”. Currently, I use Linux for that purpose (compute cluster), but it doesn’t mean I’d ignore a product from MS that might address the same problem in a slightly different way.