>>>>> "ivo" == Ivo Grosse <grosse@cshl.org> writes: >> pay more per-node for a queuing environment) but I'd appreciate any >> other suggestions on free cycle stealing queuing environments. ivo> Could anybody who has experience with Condor and Mosix compare the two? ivo> Of course, the concepts are different, but comparable in the sense ivo> that both allow you to make use of idle computers in the network. I ivo> would like to learn which of the two ivo> - is less intrusive, MOSIX. ivo> - is easier to install, Tie (depends on if you prefer kernel mucking with user/system-level config mucking) ivo> - is easier to maintain, MOSIX (except for kernel issues; you might have to roll-your-own patch) ivo> - is more robust, Condor (Checkpointing is a plus) ivo> - is more efficient, i.e., has less overhead, Not clear -- MOSIX generates a fair amount of network traffic, and occassionally (maybe "rarely" is better) ivo> - cause less network traffic. See above. I'm not sure that Condor does network evaluations of CPU usage/loads as often, but MOSIX works on a local-level, i.e. figures out load on nearest neighbors, for balancing. ivo> Are there other alternatives? Condor is heterogeneous, for a limited definition of hetergeneous; MOSIX currently is only stable (beta or non-alpha) on i386 Linux platforms. Condor does scheduling; MOSIX could be configured to schedule amount of usage, for "most" of the cluster (but has no way of limiting job activity by itself -- a bit of code (scripting) would be required to be written to set up policy for used, and possibly backgrounding jobs based on users, etc. I really think that they are semi-orthogonal (CPU load balancing could result in weird things if both are active and aggresively balancing the same set of processes on a homogeneous cluster, but I've got no data (or experiences) to prove this). best, -tony -- A.J. Rossini Rsrch. Asst. Prof. of Biostatistics U. of Washington Biostatistics rossini@u.washington.edu FHCRC/SCHARP/HIV Vaccine Trials Net rossini@scharp.org -------------- http://software.biostat.washington.edu/ ---------------- FHCRC: M-W: 206-667-7025 (fax=4812)|Voicemail is pretty sketchy/use Email UW: Th: 206-543-1044 (fax=3286)|Change last 4 digits of phone to FAX (my friday location is usually completely unpredictable.)