Why not NT clusters? Need arguments.

[Douglas Eadline]

On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Jon Tegner wrote:

> In a disussion of clusters I got the question why not using systems
> running microsoft NT. I only came up with cost and stability in a
> sweeping way, and I couldnt present more quantitative arguments. Later,
> I even found that an nt cluster sits on place 207 on the top500 list
> (see http://www.top500.org/lists/TOP500List.php3?Y=2000&M=06)
> is that an exception, or are there many of these beasts around?
> 
> I would appreciate to be enlightened on this issue.


The fine people on this list can provide a large number of reasons
for choosing Linux over NT. Let me give you an empirical observation.

I have not read about or seen any reference many production
NT clusters. (Those that are actually doing something useful)
On the other hand, I can tell you we have quite a few customers who
are designing aircraft, computing molecules, and finding oil
with Linux clusters.  There are many other applications out
there running day in and day out on Linux clusters. I have not
seen this with NT. My only conclusion is that if it worked
well you would see more. One sure reason is that HPC (High Performance
Computing) has been and will continue to be a *NIX world. Just
seems to work better.

Doug

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