[Beowulf] clustering using xen virtualized machines

[Jonathan Aquilina]

chris not only the vm being portable yes you would take a hit yet from my
research into xen it seems like the paid version of citrix xen server has
some other nice features such as migration to a back up machine in case of
hardware failure.

when you all say performance hit how much of a hit are we talking about.
also if you guys are running on bare metal a number of complex computations
arent you sharing resources that way as well?

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 1:02 AM, Chris Dagdigian <dag at sonsorol.org> wrote:

>
> One of the virtualization trends I do see in HPC/clustering is in the area
> of packaging up entire scientific applications into their own custom VMs
> which contain all the necessary libraries, software dependencies etc.
>
> There is a performance hit now and implementation is clunky but I can see
> cases where "each app sits in its own VM" and the VMs get launched across a
> cluster would helpful.
>
> This sort of work is trending upwards with Amazon AWS and other
> infrastructure providers - it can be easier to blast your workflow out into
> 'the cloud' if it's all wrapped up in a self contained and super portable
> VM.
>
> Given how many different versions of R and other core tools like Perl etc.
> that I need to support on heterogenous scientific clusters this could be a
> good trend, heh.
>
> Just my $.02
>
> -Chris
>
>
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-- 
Jonathan Aquilina
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