[Beowulf] "Part-time" beowulf clusters

[Julien Leduc]

Hi,

>I would like to know information about "part-time" clusters (I don't
>know if there's a specific name for it).
>
>The concept I'm thinking, and that I'm sure is implemented already
>somewhere, is to use PC's that only are used during daytime, to run
>code during night time. A good example is to use the PC's from a
>computer lab at any school, connect them to a switch, and use them as
>a cluster when they're idle.
>  
>
A project was developped in the previous lab I worked for, and resulted 
in a product that was later released as an opensource software: 
https://www.computenode.org

I do not know about the current status of this software (I am not a 
developper either), but, if it can help. It can be a good start to build 
this kind of infrastructure (it is a diskless NFS-root based cluster 
with a kernel compiled without any harddisk drive driver), it includes a 
set of CGI scripts to manage/monitor the nodes.
Hope this can help.

Regards,

Julien Leduc