I am going to take this thread down another possible road that nobody has mentioned.
What about an HPC cluster in a data center, enterprise, environment hell even an ISP environment. Does the same still apply? > Instead of letting this devolve into a distro battle (I have no dog in > that race, but I know from long hard experience what to avoid), it makes > more sense to look at the bigger picture. > > In the larger frame, a cluster is a mechanism to provide computing > cycles. The keepers of the cluster are service folks, in the sense that > they are providing a shared resource with specific functionality, and > providing a service to the internal (and sometimes external) consumers > of the service. > > In this day and age of software defined everything, a cluster needs to > be as flexible as possible, and provide the necessary level and type of > service to be viable. Not simply economically viable, but practical, > and pragmatic. > > Which means cluster admins and service teams need to address many > different environmental issues and requests. > > In academic circles, where there may be less of a push for commercial > support on software, these requirements may be relaxed relative to other > users. > > In commercial circles, where one might need to guarantee results (for > any number of reasons, and yes, this happens), the environments are far > more rigid. > > How can a provider of cycles provide service to a rigid set of > requirements without being flexible? > > My argument is, fundamentally, that technologies like kvm, and Docker on > Linux provide a simple mechanism for that functionality. On Windows > (very few windows clusters, but still) you can do this with HyperV. > > So the details of what runs at the base level on the cluster matter far > less than the detailed requirements and the business needs for the > application. The latter should determine the former, and if the latter > requires something different than the former supplies, kvm/Docker etc. > can provide this. So can bare metal stateless. > > Or conversely, you could simply provide exactly one type of computing, > and watch your users go elsewhere, specifically to resources that will > give them what they require. Somehow that seems to be not-precisely > what this crowd would want though. > > Its just a thought though. Gentoo or not doesn't matter as much as > *how* your users need to use it. Thats the point of pain. If the > distro can't handle it, or isn't supported correctly, yes, you'll need > to change. If your cycle provider is rigid in what they will provide, > its pretty easy to go to another cycle provider. > > This is what clusters in clouds have created. This is why there are > folks like Cycle Computing for cloud based clusters, and many good folks > like Sabalcore with bare metal systems. Application and business needs > dictate platform choices. > > -- > Joseph Landman, Ph.D > Founder and CEO > Scalable Informatics, Inc. > email: land...@scalableinformatics.com > web : http://scalableinformatics.com > twtr : @scalableinfo > phone: +1 734 786 8423 x121 > cell : +1 734 612 4615 > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
