[Beowulf] SGI to offer Windows on clusters

[Jim Lux]

At 07:09 AM 1/17/2007, Joe Landman wrote:
>Mikhail Kuzminsky wrote:
>>In message from Mikael Fredriksson <mike at etek.chalmers.se> (Mon, 15 
>>Jan 2007 20:00:17 +0100):
>>>This article: "SGI to offer Windows on clusters" might be worth reading...
>>>
>>>http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9007859&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8 
>>>
>>>Any comments?
>>   In any case it's bad news :-( SGI has solid reputation in HPC 
>> and university world, and may be somebody will be tempted. But 
>> it's interesting, w/which prices SGI will sell their clusters ? 
>> Hope that the price will be much more higher than for SGI Linux clusters ;-)
>
>My understanding of pricing (for the windows portion) is that it 
>adds (as an OS) $500USD to each node.  So for a 32 node machine, 
>this is an extra $16k USD "tax" added on.  Doesn't include the 
>absolutely necessary antivirus, anti-spyware, ...

Probably wouldn't be that expensive, especially if you boot the same 
image on all nodes of the cluster.  Update one, update all.

Site licenses for AV and AS software are heavily discounted from 
retail, as well.

Is this Windows clustering version, too?




>   Calling all that roughly $4k USD (roughly $125/node), we are 
> looking at something closer to $20k extra per 32 nodes.  So for 128 
> nodes, this adds $80k USD.  For 1024 nodes, this adds $640k USD.
>
>My question has been on the CBA side.  What do you get for that 
>extra tax that you don't get now?
>
>Microsoft could simply be subsidizing this for SGI.  Others have 
>(cough cough) for them.