[Beowulf] Beowulf SysAdmin Job Description

[Prentice Bisbal]

Steve Herborn wrote:
> Right now "I" think a lot of what you say is from the perspective of "while
> true at the time".  
> 
> As HPCC goes mainstream and all the bugs, wrinkles, and bumps in the road
> are straightened away we'll begin to see the Scientists who developed (and
> were forced to maintain) them move on to more esoteric conundrums that face
> them and their research.  I have no idea what the next great break-through
> in computing will be, put I highly doubt from a processing perspective it
> will be the IT guys who've been forced into standardization, availability
> and cost reduction.
> 
> Eventually even HPCC will get homogenized and integrated into an
> organizations overall greater IT structure as these systems are used more &
> more for business purposes.  At that time a plain-old Unix SysAdmin just
> might do, be they self-taught or degreed.

Definitely possible.

> 
> People end up working with computers as a primary job for any number of
> reasons, but I do not consider that to be necessarily working in IT.
> 
> The one thing that does seem to be apparent is not an awful lot of people
> have HPCC SysAdmin as a job description.  I suspect most have some other
> type of job description and ended up doing HPCC work out of necessity to
> fulfill their primary job role.
> 
> Or, on the other hand I'm completely out to lunch.  :)

No, not out to lunch. Those last two paragraphs are pretty much what I
said. A lot of scientists start out doing research, and end up cluster
admins, or it at least becomes a big part of the job.

Just recently there were a lot of questions asked (or was that on the
SGE mailing list?) by a grad student who ended up responsible for the
departments cluster.


-- 
Prentice