[ubuntu-za] info on simple clusters, an example in action

[Ivan Schoultz]

After much research, (many different apps do very specific things, e.g 
some only load-balance Oracle databases, others load-balance HTTP 
traffic etc.) I think I have found the solution to my old-box/new-life 
problem:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/openMosix-HOWTO/x204.html


The openMosix HOWTO:
Prev <http://tldp.org/HOWTO/openMosix-HOWTO/x172.html> 	Chapter 2. So 
what is openMosix Anyway ? 	Next 
<http://tldp.org/HOWTO/openMosix-HOWTO/x210.html>

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  2.3. openMosix in action: An example

openMosix clusters can take various forms. To demonstrate this, let's 
assume you are a student and share a dorm room with a rich computer 
science guy, with whom you have linked computers to form an openMosix 
cluster. Let's also assume you are currently converting music files from 
your CDs to Ogg Vorbis for your private use, which is legal in your 
country. Your roommate is working on a project in C++ that he says will 
bring World Peace. However, at just this moment he is in the bathroom 
doing unspeakable things, and his computer is idle.

So when you start a program like bladeenc to convert Bach's .... from 
.wav to .ogg format, the openMosix routines on your machine compare the 
load on both nodes and decide that things will go faster if that process 
is sent from your Pentium-233 to his Athlon XP. This happens 
automatically: you just type or click your commands as you would if you 
were on a standalone machine. All you notice is that when you start two 
more coding runs, things go a lot faster, and the response time doesn't 
go down.

Now while you're still typing ...., your roommate comes back, mumbling 
something about red chili peppers in cafeteria food. He resumes his 
tests, using a program called 'pmake', a version of 'make' optimized for 
parallel execution. Whatever he's doing, it uses up so much CPU time 
that openMosix even starts to send subprocesses to your machine to 
balance the load.

This setup is called *single-pool*: all computers are used as a single 
cluster. The advantage/disadvantage of this is that your computer is 
part of the pool: your stuff will run on other computers, but their 
stuff will run on yours too.

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<http://tldp.org/HOWTO/openMosix-HOWTO/index.html> 	Next 
<http://tldp.org/HOWTO/openMosix-HOWTO/x210.html>
The story so far 	Up <http://tldp.org/HOWTO/openMosix-HOWTO/what.html> 
Components


-- 
Regards
Ivan Schoultz | New Media
Modus Brand Company | t: 011 463-7500 | f: 011 463-7001

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