[Beowulf] Alpha beowulf: True64 or Linux?

[Tim Cutts]

On 25 Sep 2007, at 10:39 pm, Peter St. John wrote:

> Ah. Maybe I can intuit the question, from the subject:
>
> For a beowulf-style cluster of DEC (now HP) Alpha nodes, would it  
> be better to use True64 (HP's brand of unix inherited from DEC, as  
> opposed to HP/UX) or Linux?
>
> In my case, there are some (aging) Alpha boxes available, so I may  
> use linux for compatibility with wintel nodes in a heterogenous  
> system. Obviously I don't know any details of Elke's situation.

I've heard of people making clusters out of Alphas running Linux  
before - can't remember where, but I did see someone had done it.

Here at Sanger, we used to have a 400 node cluster of AlphaServer  
DS10Ls running Tru64.  We have long since got rid of them and  
switched to Linux on X86 hardware, the main reason being cost.  It  
really isn't cost-effective to carry on maintaining old  
AlphaServers.  HP start charging a *lot* of money for maintenance  
after a while (more, in fact, than it would have cost to replace the  
machines with more powerful X86 boxes).

So I'd be tempted to say don't bother with an Alphaserver cluster at  
all any more, but if you are going to have one, it can be made to  
work with either OS.

Tim


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