Scyld ClusterWare™: An Innovative Architecture For Maximizing Return On Investment In Linux Clustering
by Donald Becker and Bob Monkman
Enterprises require commercial grade high performance computing (HPC) that scales on-demand in order to adapt to ever changing workload requirements and provide optimal system utilization. These needs in turn have driven many useful innovations.
However, these improvements were all based on the fundamental assumption that a cluster or grid configuration must be provisioned as a static, disk-based, full operating system installation on every single server. This approach only masks the complexity from view by adding a second layer of code without removing the underlying problem. This actually magnifies the operating costs of managing and maintaining large pools of servers.
Many organizations assumed these constraints were inherent within HPC and chose to either live with less than optimal return on investment (ROI) or avoided HPC altogether. Instead, rethinking these fundamental concepts can yield surprising results that can eliminate the very complexities many software .solutions. strive to merely camouflage. Scyld ClusterWare, for example, turns this flawed assumption on its head and gives an elegantly simple and powerful new paradigm of virtualized clustered computing.
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