/. MS vs. university Beowulfs

[Velocet]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2002 at 12:31:09PM +0100, Eugene Leitl's all...
> 
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/21/0522242&mode=thread&tid=109
> 
> Posted by Cliff on Thursday February 21, @12:30PM
> 
> from the please...no-more-beowulf-jokes dept.
> 
> cascadefx asks: "I work for a mid-sized mid-western university. One of our
> departments has started up a small Beowulf cluster research project that
> he hopes to grow over time. At the moment, the thing is incredibly weak...
> but it is running on old hardware and is basically used for dog and pony
> shows to get more funding and hopefully donations of higher-end systems.
> It runs Linux and works, it is just not anything to write home about.
> Here's the problem: my understanding is that an MS rep asked what it would
> take to get them to switch to a Microsoft cluster. Is this possible? Are
> there MS clusters that do what Beowulf clusters are capable of? I thought
> MS clusters were for load balancing, not computation... which is the
> hoped-for goal of this project. Can the Slashdot crowd offer some advice?
> If there are MS clusters, comparisons of the capabilities would be
> welcome." One has to only go as far as Microsoft's site to see its current
> attempt at clustering, but what is the real story. Have any of you had a
> chance to pit a Linux Beowulf cluster against one from Microsoft? How did
> they compare?

Have fun wading through the blind linux advocacy and silly jokes to try
and find any content.

If someone can summarize any real information they grok from this massive
thread (ie how good is computational clustering on M$), please post it here.

/kc

> 
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-- 
Ken Chase, math at velocet.ca  *  Velocet Communications Inc.  *  Toronto, CANADA