I know some of you aren't, um, tolerant of Microsoft for various reasons but I thought I'd clear up a couple errors in some of the posts. If you hate Microsoft at least you now have an email address for when you're feeling grumpy.
Pricing Retail pricing for Windows Server is about $750. Retail pricing for Compute Cluster Server (CCS) is around $470. Most users will get the product through either an OEM or a volume licensing agreement. In both cases they pay less than retail. Academic users can purchase CCS for less than $100. CCS is comprised of two CDs. The first is Windows Server. The second CD contains the clustering tools. The second CD has three major features: 1) a job scheduler, 2) systems management tools, and 3) Microsoft's MPI stack. The majority of HPC systems sold are small (less than 256 nodes) and we've designed for those customers. So, users get an OS, job scheduler, management package, and MPI stack for < $500. Our MPI stack is based on MPICH2 but we've made performance and security enhancements. The folks at ANL are very talented UNIX developers but Windows is more efficient using async overlapped I/O. We've made other, similar changes to our stack and we're providing those changes back to ANL for incorporation in future MPICH stacks. We're also the first group at Microsoft making these kinds of sizable contributions back to the open source community. SGI These folks are great and I'm sure they have a lot to teach from their years in HPC. Also, we've hired people onto our HPC team from places like Platform Computing, Cray, Silverstorm and other related companies. While we may be new, and while v1 products may be a little rough, I think we're going to help the community bring HPC into mainstream computing. Thanks, Ryan Waite Group Program Manager, HPC Microsoft -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joe Landman Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 10:33 AM To: Jim Lux Cc: Mikhail Kuzminsky; Beowulf@beowulf.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Beowulf] SGI to offer Windows on clusters Jim Lux wrote: >> My understanding of pricing (for the windows portion) is that it adds >> (as an OS) $500USD to each node. So for a 32 node machine, this is an >> extra $16k USD "tax" added on. Doesn't include the absolutely >> necessary antivirus, anti-spyware, ... > > Probably wouldn't be that expensive, especially if you boot the same It is. List is 479$US per compute node. > image on all nodes of the cluster. Update one, update all. I agree. If it were 479$ per cluster (of any size, sorta like you can do with Linux for $0 per cluster), this would be interesting. > Site licenses for AV and AS software are heavily discounted from retail, > as well. $125 per node is guess. Even if it is $60, or $20. Basic idea is the same. Costs scale per node for this path. It adds cost. Whether or not the benefit one derives from these costs is worth it is important, as is whether or not the benefit one derives from the alternatives are higher or lower. > Is this Windows clustering version, too? Yes. -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Founder and CEO Scalable Informatics LLC, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web : http://www.scalableinformatics.com phone: +1 734 786 8423 fax : +1 734 786 8452 or +1 866 888 3112 cell : +1 734 612 4615 _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
