MOSIX or Beowulf ?

Leslie Donaldson donaldlf at hermes.cs.rose-hulman.edu
Sat Jan 27 18:30:14 PST 2001


Hello all,

 I have banding this question around and I thought I would
see if I get some people to "correct" any mistakes I have
here. and yes I have read the FAQ's but they never answer
the single question... what is a beowulf cluster.

A Mosix cluster is an intel only cluster that needs.
  1- All machines to be running the same kernel.
     ergo a homogenous cluster.
  2-Fast networking.
It provides the ability to automatically load balance the mebers
of the cluster by transparently moving process between the cluster
members.
 Weakness.
  1-A process may only be movd if NO shared memory is being used.

Beowulf seems to me to be a cluster of machines connected with
a hihg speed networking fabric that then a secondary set of
libraries is used to spawn the process on individual nodes.
Depending on the software (and libraries) being used this
may be a heterogenous cluster.


Or at least this is what it seems to me.

Anyone care to flame and set the record straight ????

Leslie Donaldson

>Its becomming a bit confusing for me.
>I can't seem to pin-out what is a better "standard"
>for setting up a cluster ... MOSIX or BEOWULF .
>And what is the difference between both of them
>
>Thanks
>Cyrus

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