[Beowulf] Cluster of Linux and Windows

[Mark Hahn]

> I am used to work with Arch Linux. What do you think about it?

the distro is basically irrelevant.  clustering is just a matter of 
your apps, middleware like mpi (may or may not be provided by the 
cluster), probably a shared filesystem, working kernel, network stack,
job-launch mechanism.  distros are mainly about desktop gunk that 
is completely irrelevant to clusters.

> And finnaly, I would like to know if Is it possible to get a Cluster Working
> with a Server on Arch Linux and the nodes Windows.

sure, but why?  windows is generally inferior as an OS platform,
so I would stay away unless you actually require your apps to run
under windows.  (remember that linux can use windows storage and
authentication just fine.)

> Or even better the nodes without a defined SO.

SO=Significant Other?  oh, maybe "OS".  generally, you want to minimize 
the number of things that can go wrong in your system.  using uniform OS
on nodes/servers is a good start.  but sure, there's no reason you can't
run a cluster where every node is a different OS.  they simply need to 
agree on the network protocol (which doesn't have to be MPI - in fact,
using something more SOA-like might help if the nodes are heterogenous)