As part of my graduate research, I need to run a job of a genome-wide scale. Using all of the computers available to me at my lab, this can take about 6 months. We don't have a cluster... I am already making use of a students computer lab, after-hours. Those computers run linux, and it was a no-brainer : just hacked some scripts to rshell into the machines, activated by the crond. It's not enough, though. While I'm looking at the option of getting or buying CPU time on a cluster, I am also tempted to make use of other public PCs at the campus. The ideal thing here is to have something like SETI@home or Fold@home, but I would go for anything that will allow me to have my jobs running on as many PCs as possible here, while not making me the enemy of the system admins... We're talking about Windows based PCs (mostly 2000 or XP), at least some of them are managed using a central image. Right now it looks like the simplest option is to install sshd or telnet service on them, and have a script that logs in after hours, and execute some binary. However, I'm not sure this would go well with the sys-admins (security implications?). I think it would be best if I can approach the authorities with a sensible plan - first impressions are very important... I would like to hear anything about this subject: configuration suggestions, past experience, encouragements, discouragements, etc. Arnon