From owner-freebsd-cluster@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 23 21:14:32 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 C754416A4CE for ; Tue, 23 Nov 2004 21:14:32 +0000 (GMT) Received: from priv-edtnes40.telusplanet.net (outbound05.telus.net [199.185.220.224]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3DCC743D46 for ; Tue, 23 Nov 2004 21:14:32 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from alex@taskforce-1.com) Received: from node2.grid0 ([206.116.226.103]) by priv-edtnes40.telusplanet.netESMTP <20041123211431.WUYI27713.priv-edtnes40.telusplanet.net@node2.grid0> for ; Tue, 23 Nov 2004 14:14:31 -0700 From: Alex Pavlovic Organization: TF-1 To: freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 13:16:53 -0800 User-Agent: KMail/1.6.2 References: <1101168686.3370.210.camel@work.gusalmighty.com> <20041122163244.M31380@knight.ixsystems.net> <1101172829.15634.5.camel@work.gusalmighty.com> In-Reply-To: <1101172829.15634.5.camel@work.gusalmighty.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="big5" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200411231316.53793.alex@taskforce-1.com> Subject: Re: Clustering options X-BeenThere: freebsd-cluster@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Clustering FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 21:14:32 -0000 On November 22, 2004 05:20 pm, 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? There is. It's called SSI or single system image. Basically it provides you with single root, init and process space. Currently I know of two open source products that implement this ( OpenSSI and openMosix ). Unfortantely they are both targeted toward linux. openMosix seems to be geared toward computational aspects ( HPC ), while OpenSSI project is trying to unify various cluster factions and provide a "one size fits all" solution. There are some other papers on FreeBSD clusters that people have designed, my favourite is the one on a very nice general computing cluster published by Brooks Davis ( Aerospace Corporation ), look here: http://people.freebsd.org/~brooks/papers/bsdcon2003/fbsdcluster.pdf There is also some information on the grid computing available here: http://people.freebsd.org/~brooks/pubs/usebsd2004/fbsdgrids.pdf Just something on the side, Manex Visual Effects actually used a 32 node FreeBSD cluster as the core rendering farm to make some of the special effects for the "Matrix" movie. You can read the story if you haven't already here: http://www.freebsd.org/news/press-rel-1.html Cheers. -- Alex Pavlovic TF-1