[Beowulf] While the knives are out... Wulf Keepers

[Greg Lindahl]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2006 at 10:47:00AM +1000, SIM DOG wrote:

> I recently visited a large educational institution (that shall remain
> nameless) that hosts an excellent, world class, science research team.
> They also have a reasonably large Beowulf environment (over 100 dual nodes).
> 
> Now maybe it was just the people I was talking too (management) but I
> get the distinct impression that they treat their 'Wulf as an
> 'appliance'. It came as a great disappointment :/

Why so?

That cluster didn't cost that much compared to half a person, unless
the person is a grad student. Which doesn't fit their reliability
criterion ;-)

I'm a big fan of supercomputing appliances. It's only when a cluster
is big that it always makes sense to have an on-staff expert.

-- greg
(back from vacation, avoiding reading the end of that previous thread...)