[Beowulf] Is Beowulf a standard?

[Mark Hahn]

> As as a newbie I have a question, "Is Beowulf a clustering standard?" if yes

I would call it a defacto standard, but I'm fairly liberal ;)

> "What makes Beowulf a standard"
> As I read about Beowulf, it appeared to me as a method for starting Linux
> clustering, but some people call it a standard, I couldn't understand that
> what makes Beowulf a standard, so your help is appreciated

strictly, "standard" means a unitary rule to which everything conforms,
or else is sub-standard and defective.  I don't think many people would 
talk clusters that deviate from the "beowulf norm" as defective.

in fact, I'm not sure there really even is a beowulf norm - 
as they say, I know it when I see it.  for instance, using cheap,
whitebox commodity parts is more beowulfish than using high-end servers.
HA clusters are less beowulfish.  a cluster with some sort of gold-plated
components (quadrics, FC san, 24" LCD on each node) would be less beowulfish.

I think it would be fair to say that beowulf is a collection of techniques
to harnessing many commodity computers towards a somewhat unified
or consistent purpose.