Thanks John, I appreciate your response. It is what I thought but I wasn't quite sure. I looked at MPICH2 for Windows and it does have two techniques with tradeoffs as you mentioned...I hope that you do decide to open up things a little more and allow other job schedulers and MPI stacks access to the credential management. I know from experience that the current job schedulers on Windows (other than your own) do not handle credentials in a transparent manner and it would be nice if their credential management was better implemented....entering a user password and saving it...'somewhere safe' is not really an ideal solution especially when the users password changes and the job scheduler does not pickup the change.
Regards, Bill Bryce Product Manager Platform Open Cluster Stack -----Original Message----- From: John Vert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue 4/3/2007 10:32 PM To: Bill Bryce; Robert G. Brown Cc: beowulf@beowulf.org Subject: RE: [Beowulf] Win64 Clusters!!!!!!!!!!!! The job scheduler is responsible for managing the user credentials and tokens as well as allocating CPUs to jobs. So if you are not going to use our scheduler, you need a different solution for the credential management. How do the user's processes get created with the right token? MPICH2 has a couple different solutions with different tradeoffs - I'm not sure which one you use. We have had requests for two different scenarios - enabling other MPI stacks to use the credential management of our job scheduler and enabling other job schedulers to do the credential management for our MPI stack. We are looking at both of these for the next release but they didn't make V1. So like most product decisions, we didn't "have to do this" it was just the normal tradeoff you make between features and schedules with a healthy dose of security paranoia thrown into the mix. John Vert Development Manager High Performance Computing -----Original Message----- From: Bill Bryce [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 1:12 PM To: John Vert; Robert G. Brown Cc: beowulf@beowulf.org Subject: RE: [Beowulf] Win64 Clusters!!!!!!!!!!!! Can I ask one simple question..... Why did Microsoft have to do this (and I quote from MSDN) "Every job and task that uses Microsoft MPI must be submitted through the Microsoft job scheduler. There are several ways to submit jobs and tasks to the job scheduler:" I do not have that restriction with other MPI's such as MPICH2 for Windows from Argonne. Regards, Bill. -----Original Message----- From: John Vert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 3:19 PM To: Robert G. Brown; Bill Bryce Cc: beowulf@beowulf.org Subject: RE: [Beowulf] Win64 Clusters!!!!!!!!!!!! I'd like to clear up a few misconceptions on this thread. 1. There is no "MS specific library that abuses 'standard MPI'". The #1 goal for our MPI implementation is to make it as simple as possible for software vendors to port their codes to Windows and our MPI stack. That is why we based our implementation on MPICH2. The feedback we have gotten from software vendors has shown this approach was successful and we have had very few issues with MPI incompatibilities. We have not added anything outside the MPI spec. 2. MPICH2 is not licensed under GPL or under BSD. See http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/mpi/mpich2/license.htm Many commercial closed-source MPI implementations have been based on MPICH. Microsoft is actively working with Argonne on incorporating the changes we made back into the MPICH2 distribution. Argonne has been great to work with and really supportive of our efforts. 3. The changes we made can be loosely grouped into three areas. Performance, security, and scheduler integration. We handle the user credentials differently than Argonne's Windows implementation which is different than Argonne's Linux implementation due to some fundamental differences between the two operating systems. The scheduler integration is pretty straightforward - things like cleaning up all MPI child processes when a job is cancelled, and automatically propagating things like the allocated nodes and the number of CPUs from the scheduler to mpiexec. I don't think this is significantly different than what other job schedulers have done. 4. If you want to learn more about Windows HPC clusters, I recommend checking out www.microsoft.com/hpc and www.windowshpc.net. I'm also happy to answer questions on this list, but frankly the S/N ratio tends to drop dramatically as soon as someone mentions Windows or Microsoft. John Vert Development Manager High Performance Computing -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert G. Brown Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 7:59 AM To: Bill Bryce Cc: beowulf@beowulf.org Subject: RE: [Beowulf] Win64 Clusters!!!!!!!!!!!! On Tue, 3 Apr 2007, Bill Bryce wrote: > So this change effectively ties Microsoft MPI to only Microsoft Windows > platforms, and the security changes are closed source. Not all of > Microsoft's partners like MS MPI - when HP ships Microsoft CCS they > remove MS MPI and put in HP MPI - which probably just adds to confusion > on the end user side. Security changes? To MPI itself? This puts them into a somewhat grey area with regard to the GPL, doesn't it... that viral thing. I'm sure that they can manage the remote job launch any way that they like, but doesn't that leave the MPI CODE still portable? It isn't completely crazy that the US government would intervene here if they broke MPI portability. After all, MPI exists at all primarily because of direct government intervention (unlike PVM, which exists because some Very Bright People conceived it and invented it and made it fly). Still, nothing the Borg Empire does in this regard would surprise me. rgb > > Regards, > > Bill. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of Robert G. Brown > Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 8:22 PM > To: Tom Mitchell > Cc: beowulf@beowulf.org > Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Win64 Clusters!!!!!!!!!!!! > > On Mon, 2 Apr 2007, Tom Mitchell wrote: > >> On Sun, Apr 01, 2007 at 02:02:53PM +0500, amjad ali wrote: >>> Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 14:02:53 +0500 >>> From: "amjad ali" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>> To: beowulf@beowulf.org >>> Subject: [Beowulf] Win64 Clusters!!!!!!!!!!!! >>> >>> Hi All, >>> >>> Would any of you please like to share usage-experience/views/comments >>> about Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 based Beowulf Clusters? >>> >>> What in your opinion is the future of such clusters? >>> >>> How you compare these with the LINUX CLUSTERS? >> >> With full consideration to "fat, soft pretzels with >> cheezy-mustard sauce or rolled in asiago parmesan and garlic." >> >> MS pulled a version of mpich/mvapich/MPI and ported it to windows. >> They also developed some library code to gateway some *inx > library/system >> calls to windows. The root sources of MPI are public and not GPL so > they can. >> >> It might be worth looking at the MS announcement -- but why >> bother. If you look you might think that common MPI codes >> would just compile and run... I have no idea I expect some will >> and there begins silly porting for the next... > > Sure. MS did this, no doubt. And as you note below, no sooner do they > get it in when they begin the borgification of MPI, just as they've > borgified java, c, c++, and anything in the Universe they can sucker > somebody into buying in borgified form. > > Borgifying MPI is the most humorous thing in the Universe, BTW, given > its historical origins -- it was basically a language written > (reluctantly!) by supercomputer vendors when the US government got tired > of paying for all their important codes to be ported to each new > generation of proprietary hardware with its proprietary low level calls. > MS is doubtless trying to figure out just how much of that they can > undo while building up a big enough market share and enough vendors of > closed source applications written with their borgisms that they can... > > Oh wait. It IS GPL. Do you think that they actually read it? > > However, I was really referring to the other aspects of program > development and performance tuning associated with using a closed source > development environment. > > Resistance is Futile. > > rgb > >> >> Once a set of boxes are interconnected and you have library >> support for MPI or another way to share data (PVM... whatever) >> you are off and running in the clustering world. Sadly MS >> has a MS specific library that abuses "standard MPI" and could >> quickly cause source code to surface that runs correctly or on a >> MS cluster but not on another OS based cluster (Linux, Solaris, >> Irix, AIX). I see this all the time with java script, and c, >> c++, and other codes where little 'features' hook you in. >> >> Some will be fooled into thinking that this is something to look at >> or worse something to spend money on. >> >> SUMMARY: >> Since you posted this on 1 Apr 2007 all I can do is giggle >> and wonder why I replied. >> >> Regards, >> mitch >> >> PS: Ask in a year but not on April fools/joke day. >> >> > > -- Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:[EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
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