Want to build web cluster server

Robert G. Brown rgb at phy.duke.edu
Thu May 23 06:28:10 PDT 2002


On Wed, 22 May 2002, Martin Catudal wrote:

> Anyone have already build a web cluster server and have not trouble with it
> ?
> Please, i need some information and documentation for making it.

Wrong list.  Beowulfery is about "High Performance Computing"; making
computer clusters intended to do numerically intensive work.  There is a
whole world of effort also being devoted to "High Availability
Computing" -- building webserver clusters, database clusters, clusters
intended to provide a distributed interface to stored information.
Although there are obvious areas of overlap (the word "clusters", some
elements of network design) they are mostly orthogonal.

The Extreme Linux list and website used to be an embracing entity that
included both, but EL seems largely moribund EXCEPT for beowulfery.  A
lot of the HA efforts are directed by the big linux companies as they
have obvious large-scale commercial potential (where beowulfery/HPC
tends to have more focused commercial potential and tends to be served
by a relatively few companies devoted to that purpose alone).  Red Hat,
TurboLinux, and other distributions often have a release prepackaged
with special tools and configurations to support building web farms and
so forth.

Unless I miss the point of your question, and you are trying to build an
HPC cluster with a web-based interface for task management.  Which one
day we will likely see -- I've kicked the idea around with various
entrepreneur types in my own company and we may yet see clusters built
that basically provide cycles to anonymous clients, executing numerical
coarse grain/EP tasks like SETI or RC5 in a chroot jail and billed with
e.g. paypal.  This isn't horribly difficult to set up, but one needs a
business model, some capital and some eager clients who don't want the
hassle of building or managing a beowulf locally.  And then, somebody is
probably already doing it...

   rgb

> 
> Thank's to all !
> 
> Beowulf enthousiasme !
> 
> Martin Catudal
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-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu






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