From owner-freebsd-cluster@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 23 05:44:40 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C2D6516A4CE for ; Tue, 23 Nov 2004 05:44:40 +0000 (GMT) Received: from tinker.exit.com (tinker.exit.com [206.223.0.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A28F43D48 for ; Tue, 23 Nov 2004 05:44:40 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from frank@exit.com) Received: from realtime.exit.com (realtime [206.223.0.5]) by tinker.exit.com (8.13.1/8.12.9) with ESMTP id iAN5rCQN097579; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:53:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from frank@exit.com) Received: from realtime.exit.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by realtime.exit.com (8.13.1/8.12.9) with ESMTP id iAN5iUJ0072092; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:44:30 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from frank@realtime.exit.com) Received: (from frank@localhost) by realtime.exit.com (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id iAN5iUUQ072091; Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:44:30 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from frank) From: Frank Mayhar Message-Id: <200411230544.iAN5iUUQ072091@realtime.exit.com> In-Reply-To: <1101172829.15634.5.camel@work.gusalmighty.com> To: Justin Hopper Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:44:30 -0800 (PST) X-Copyright0: Copyright 2004 Frank Mayhar. All Rights Reserved. X-Copyright1: Permission granted for electronic reproduction as Usenet News or email only. X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL119 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Clustering options X-BeenThere: freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: frank@exit.com List-Id: Clustering FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 05:44:40 -0000 Justin Hopper wrote: > Is there no appliance that allows for the details of the hardware to be > hidden from the OS and instead present to the OS a unified architecture, > like it's just one machine, but with the ability to add more nodes to > expand CPU, RAM, and disk? I guess this was my misunderstanding, as > this is what I assumed the blade systems did. I assume it would be > incredibly tricky to manage dynamically configurable hardware in the > operating system, but I also assumed that somebody had pulled it off, > but maybe not? Well, there's software that does that (or something like it), but not in BSD-land, at least not yet. Although I agitated hard to port what is now OpenSSI (see http://www.openssi.org/) to FreeBSD back in 2000, they ported it to Linux instead, sigh. I would really love it if someone would actually pay me to do the port to FreeBSD (or, better, to reimplement it). But that's pretty unlikely. So no, clustering support is thin on the ground for BSD. Maybe someday, when Matt manages to start work on his SSI stuff for Dragonfly. -- Frank Mayhar frank@exit.com http://www.exit.com/ Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/ http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/