[Bioclusters] Cluster ideas/suggestions

[Joe Landman]

Hi Nick:

Nick D'Angelo wrote:
> In speaking to our R and D managers, they posed a good question.
> 
> What about their desktop machines (relatively New Dell PCs), have them
> automatically shutdown and reboot, say at 8:00 pm and then join the cluster
> until 05:00 am.

This is called "Beowulf-at-night" or BAN.

> 
> Then at 5:00 am, initiate another reboot that will present the Windows Login
> for the 'normal business day'.

Its not "hard" to do, though how do you handle jobs which run longer 
than usual, or machines that get wedged into some odd state?

> 
> This would make great use of the hundreds of computers that are mostly
> sitting idle during the off hours 'normal business day'.

You might wish to look at some offerings from Platform Computing.  You 
could tie those in with Cygwin or similar, and have a "unixish" place to 
run code while retaining the desktop.  You could also look at things 
like United Devices.  Just beware that there is a bit more of a 
philosophical buy-in with that approach, and it is a bit more proprietary.

Joe

> 
> Thoughts, suggestions always appreciated, thanks.
> 
> Nick
> 
> In case you need to know,  I am likely going to install the BioBrew v3.x
> which has just been pre-leased in Beta I believe.
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-- 
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics LLC,
email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
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