Microsoft Finally up for Distributed Computing? 307
ReeprFlame writes "eWeek has reported overhearing Microsoft's plans to finally get into the distributed computing market. Considering that the Windows platform has never had the ability to parallel compute in the past, it leaves great potential to the company's operating system development. From current *nix systems we have today, such a grid proves very useful, especially in the serving arena. However, we are unsure of Microsoft's target for the software. Would it be an addition to home users computers as well as the server versions of Windows? As of now it is unclear, but Microsoft probably will bring this situation to life in the near future since it does hold alot of power for them over other platforms."
Oh great... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Oh great... (Score:5, Funny)
> now we have to worry about the blue wall of death.
No, the idea is to use one node as a dedicated BSOD server, so the rest can stay up all the time.
Re:Oh great... (Score:4, Funny)
I heard the windows equivalent to Beowulf clusters were called 'Botnets'.
Nothing to worry about here... (Score:2)
Seems to me that the open source platforms are well and truly set to crucify MS in this market. Why pay for a platform when you don't have to?
I know... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I know... (Score:2)
Apparently more than my poor 1GHz Duron has available, since gcc refused to compile it.
But then again, even if it had compiled, where would I had uploaded it, now that SuprNova is down ?
And are you sure this code is the source for Longhorn, and not the leaked WinNT source ?
Re:I know... (Score:2)
Clusters (Score:2)
Keep in mind though that Windows clusters are existing. Of course this is not the same, but it's not like all servers are single-machines.
confusing parallel and distributed computing (Score:5, Informative)
distributed computing happens at the application layer. Thus if you can run something like an MPI library on windows you have the basis for efficient distributed computing. All you need is a scheduler and launcher to be able to launch distributed launch an application across the net. But virtually all of these are daemons not strictly part of the OS. So that level of system independent abstraction exists already so this should not be too difficult.
Re:confusing parallel and distributed computing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:confusing parallel and distributed computing (Score:2, Interesting)
MS clustering? Its a Joke! (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at the MSFT definition or clustering [microsoft.com], they describe two kinds of clusters:
Note the explicit restriction to "stateless".
Note they mention availability but not performance.
Third party solutions got there first (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess Microsoft is imagining a Be-- stop! put down that bat!
Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Say what
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
They cost money, they provide no advantages over linux or bsd, and they would propably need much more human hours for their administration.
besides, as i understand the article, this is mostly a development thingie, and some sort of central application management service. And with a possible* release date somewhere in the end of the decade it just doesn't seem important. I don't understand why this story was even posted
*possible as in "maybe it will be released" not as in "maybe in the end of the decade"
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
Do you know any single piece of software made by MS that you would
consider secure or reliable?
By your definition of workstation-clustering Windows already has the feature anyways.
We're reading about its RPC capabilities twice a week aren't we?
Just remotely inject your trojan of choice (sth like back orifice?) across the office and do whatever it is you want to do. Cluster computing needs application-support anyways (unless they come up with a MOSIX which
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
Pinball is pretty good, also.
I like the VPN client/server system built into NT-Win2k. it's very reliable, and the security problems it has are fixable with a little work.
Exchange 5.5 mail server is robust and pretty secure.
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
I still feel that Linux would be a good bit cheaper, but we're talking big bucks both ways. And it's also worth mentioning that Microsoft's licensing model for "corner cases" like this is extremely flexible: they may give the source away at a significant discount just for the publicity. They've done it plenty of times before. Some of those 2500 servers at work run a custom-built NT kernel and we sure aren't a huge international company.
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
Even if I had a SSH/telnet-driven command prompt, I don't think I could kill a process on a remote machine, for example; I can do it only via the GUI. Is it just because I have a lot to learn, or is it a feature I don't have?
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:3, Informative)
Even if I had a SSH/telnet-driven command prompt, I don't think I could kill a process on a remote machine, for example; I can do it only via the GUI. Is it just because I have a lot to learn, or is it a feature I don't have?
rkill, but I think it's an installable service that only comes with Resource Kit.
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
At least with Linux you get two options. a low memory command shell that shuts down when you log out, or X which only loads the application on the local processor, using the remote machine for actual display. And when your done it turns off, restoring memory to the system.
Windows GUI never shuts off. It's always there.
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
No comparison (Score:2)
Perhaps the lack of detail in your arguement has given me the wrong impression, but it sure looks to me like you or bordering on soft fud. If I misrepresent your arguement then I appoligize.
You are likely refering to customization as rewriting kernel code or writing new code for inclusion in the kernel which would be expensive either way (I suspect much more expensive for Windows because you would be paying for
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
So that's not really a reason why a Windows Cluster won't make sense.
Licensing costs are also not the biggest concern from big corporations.
Not the same thing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, Mac OS X is sitting on top of a UNIX kernel -- a modified FreeBSD. Which means all of those parts aren't GUI oriented, and you get all of the same benefits of a UNIX with all of the eye candy that Apple knows how to make work well.
Windows seems to have been built with a model that expects everything to want to be GUI based and it includes a lot of stuff geared towards that. As has been pointed out elsewhere, Windows seems to be taking networking and other stuff as add-ons without having been accounted for in the first place. Though that's probably changing somewhat over time.
In the case of OS/X, it will happily do both functions without saddling the non-GUI stuff with extra baggage.
Re:Not the same thing ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mac OS X is sitting on top of a UNIX kernel -- a modified FreeBSD.
Wrong. OSX' kernel is XNU - a modified version of Mach. OSX (or better Darwin) includes a lot of FreeBSD code, but it's not just a modified FreeBSD.
There's also a difference between Windows as a whole and just the NT kernel. The NT kernel isn't that bad. Most problems with Windows result from problems in the higher levels of the system - eg. IE.
Problems with higher levels of the Windows OS are not necessarily a reason against c
Re:Not the same thing ... (Score:2)
Well, according to wikipedia [wikipedia.org] it's more of a hybrid. But, yes, I concede it's not just a re-worked FreeBSD, but to a process it offers an almost identical interface.
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
It's beacuse it is still single-user-oriented. If you cannot be root (ahem, Administrator) you cannot do much with it.
Of course you can do much with it. Problems with non Admin accounts result from bad Win9x programming habbits. If the developers take care and write their apps in a correct way.
I don't think that the whole system needs to be rewritten from scratch to support clustering. Maybe 5% of Windows (Just a guess).
I don't say that Windows will be the best clustering OS ever, but clusterin
cutting possible (Score:2)
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
A number of years ago it was possible to actually listen to technical arguments on slashdot, but it seems that all technical considerations has been deemed less important than slamming Microsoft at every turn.
NT will work great in such a setting, if an
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
I am not saying that Linux is a worse deal in any way of course, it just does not hav
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
BTW, windows embedded allows customers to "customize" what parts of the kernel they want. They can do the same with a "cluster oriented" windows version
And remember, even if windows sucks for cluster it don't means they won't have success. Windows 9x was crappy base to build a OS on it, despite of that everyone bought windows 95.
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:3, Informative)
The Windows GUI can be turned off, along with many of the other services that you won't need in a cluster. It is not even that hard. The MS knowledge base is a mess, but the information is there. There are many performance tweaks for the NT kernel that don't require a recompile. It should be noted that most Linux clusters use unmodified, or lightly modified kernels. Most admins feel that the slight performance gain (if any) is not worth the maintananc
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:3, Informative)
ptree - pslist [sysinternals.com]
w - psloggedon [sysinternals.com]
ls -al - dir
finger - finger (standard)
unzip - expand (standard, for CABs), cygwin unzip, rar
mount - (automatic), fsutil, linkd (from resource kit)
make - make (comes with SDK)
grep - find (standard)
piping with | > < are the same
perl [perl.com]
cygwin [cygwin.com] for other UNIX processing utils.
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
of course it is but Linux doesn't need a gui. How do you tweak your registry settings without a gui? updates, okay they can be done, but how do you fix the little things when you have to run the GUI to do so.
yes remote desktop is like VNC, but then again you don't need VNC to run linux.
I guess the simple solution is show me a telnet(ssh) server that gives you FULL control over the entire OS from the command line. Not just the ability t
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would a Windows distributed node need to run a GUI? The Windows kernel can function quite happily without a GUI.
Windows can be trimmed down. Remember that this is a future project so MS can do what they want. They do have the Windows source after all. No reason why they can't get a pared down OS.
Diskless booting of Windows is possible today.
Economically we don't know what the licensing for a distributed version of Windows would be since MS hasn't decided that yet - this produ
Re:Windows clusters don't make sense (Score:2)
can you explain that? how can windows boot without disk (and which version of windows are you reffering to ? i imagined that diskless booting of XP must be impossible)
could be good (Score:5, Interesting)
If someone wanted to make millions of dollars, build something like that for windows and charge minimally for it. Better do it before Microsoft does.
Re:could be good (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:could be good (Score:2)
Specifically for Oracle there is Oracle 10g.
For various other classes of computation there are the following (plus others) on windows (and some are cross platform):
* Condor
* Entropia
* United Devices
* BOINC
* IBM community grid
* Vita Nuova's Inferno
* Sun Grid Engine (coming soon)
I
Re:could be good (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the machines are doing word processing, email, and other light-load activities. Very slow individual machines aren't useful because sometimes users want to run applications that require large amounts of
Re:could be good (Score:2)
I'm sure Microsoft will build something like that, and it will totally suc
Who wrote the summary? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this make any sense? The rest of the summary is equally nonsensical.
Re:Who wrote the summary? (Score:5, Informative)
A Peek Under Microsoft's Secret 'Bigtop'
By Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Watch
December 29, 2004
Microsoft officials have said little about the company's intentions in the grid-computing space. But that doesn't mean Microsoft is ignoring the evolving arena of grid/distributed computing.
Microsoft is working on a skunk-works project that is code-named Bigtop, which is designed to allow developers to create a set of loosely coupled, distributed operating-systems components in a relatively rapid way, according to sources close to the company, who requested anonymity.
Rather than attempting to tightly couple a few high-performance systems together, Microsoft is looking at the consequences of loosely coupling a larger number of moderately powerful computers to achieve a similar result.
Bigtop's first commercial manifestation will likely be as some kind of large-scale project, most likely a distributed grid-computing operating system, the sources added.
Bigtop is one of Microsoft's incubation projects. It falls under the domain of Craig Mundie, the Microsoft senior vice president and chief technical officer in charge of advanced strategies and policy, sources said.
Bigtop consists of three components, all written in C#, according to developers who said they were briefed by Microsoft. These are:
Highwire: Highwire is a technology designed to automate the development of highly parallel applications that distribute work over distributed resources, the aforementioned sources said. Highwire is a programming language/model that will aim to make the testing and compiling of such parallel programs much simpler and more reliable.
Bigparts: Bigparts is code designed to turn inexpensive PC devices into special-purpose servers, according to the sources. Bigparts will enable real-time, device-specific software to be moved off a PC, and instead be managed centrally via some Web services-like model.
Bigwin: According to sources close to Microsoft, Bigwin sounds like the ultimate manifestation of Microsoft's "software as a service" mantra. In a Bigwin world, applications are just collections of OS services that adhere to certain "behavioral contracts." These OS services can be provided directly by the core OS or even obtained from libraries outside of the core OS.
Sources said Microsoft will likely make some sort of preview version of the Bigtop code available to the company's software-development partners by 2006. If and when the final version debuts, it won't be much before the end of the decade, sources added.
It's not clear whether the Bigtop components will run on top of Windows when they are completed. But sources say that is what they are expecting at this point. End of Article
I like their use of a circus term as a name for this project. It gives the impression of a bunch of clowns running around into each other and falling down. Kind of like MS systems on the web now.
Sun GridEngine (Score:2, Informative)
- Windows XP and 2000 (December 2004 availability)
http://www.sun.com/software/gridware/ [sun.com]
Gridengine's source can be downloaded from:
http://gridengine.sunsource.net/ [sunsource.net]
They already dominate grid computing! (Score:2, Funny)
Just plug an unpatched XP box into the internet. It will be part of the worlds largest grid computer in less than 2 minutes.
It will also hum the tune Zombie Rock!
Already done (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine if Microsoft 'enahances' Windows to do this even easier, it'll make it even easier for spammers to write the next-generation spamming-joe-jobbing apps.
Kudos, Microsoft!
hardware is the cost (Score:3, Informative)
On linux you can remove interrupts from the kernel if your app only needs polling. Stuff like that will never be possible with a closed source solution.
Lots of ppl stop using solaris cause of this.
No ETs yet... (Score:4, Informative)
Of note: I've got some Win2K web servers running in a native WLBS load balanced rig, and those machines have been doing swell for four years now. They talk to a cluster of SQL servers, but that clustering really doesn't count... it's more like hot fail-over. The native load balancing of the web servers, though, has been pretty tight and has scaled very easily, at least within my mid-market universe.
I know, I'm just asking for it with this post. Just wanted folks to know that it's possible to push a couple $million of holiday e-commerce through some pretty cheap white boxes running MS's stuff. And yes, my cheap admin help is glad there's a GUI for some of the chores they don't do every day. All right, flame me now. But you have to do it from a command prompt.
Old BirdDog fetches dead bird (Score:2)
Re:No ETs yet... (Score:2)
Re:No ETs yet... (Score:2)
apps we run are qt based programs built with borland kylix.
Compaq Quad Boxes
CentOS with GFS and Mosix Kernel
Hitachi SAN shared fiber channel scsi
To get a great and simple introduction to the architecture just grab a copy of Kluster Knoppix
and boot about 10 nodes and play with it. Our environment is slightly more complicated but it
is esentially the same thing.
Longhorn, Grid, RFID, SmartCards... (Score:2)
Microsoft are wonderful. Trying to sell things they don't have in order to make it look as if they are ahead of the pack.
So if its announced in 2004/5 it will be "scheduled" for launch in 2007, but actually arrive in 2009.
Re:Longhorn, Grid, RFID, SmartCards... (Score:2)
It's (the announcement) a trial balloon, along the usual Microsoft marketing lines (throw enough shit, some of it will stick). They did the same thing for years with the original versions of Windows, to try to keep the market from adopting competitors.
Of course, they're too late - the free OSes have them beat already, and by the time Microsoft comes out with
Windows has been clustering for years (Score:5, Funny)
Q. What do you call a cluster of Windows machines?
A. A botnet.
hmm interesting (Score:2, Funny)
Exactly What We Need (Score:2, Funny)
Last time I checked... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Last time I checked... (Score:2)
Summary of posts (Score:5, Funny)
This is bad. M$ is evil evil. *Cough* . Bloated, FUD, GUI, copied MAC, FUD, [nonsensical, nonsensical] bloated, *Cough*, I'm waisting my life ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H. I can't believe people are so stupid to belive such M$$ lame FUD, propoganda [ nonsensical... ] Blue screen, Blue Screen!. Linux good. Why are M$$$ so stupid? Ha Ha, I'm so much smarter. *Cough* Blue Screen! this is like Clippy! [nonsensical, nonsensical], really crap. Mac good. Bad idea, unstable. Blue Screen! Open Source, Open Source! [ nonsensical... ]. M$ Bob. Zombie. Blue Screen, Blue Screen! Security ^H^H^H^H^H^H *cough*. IE, ahhh! ahhh! Blue screen. Stupid.
Microsoft is all about user choice (Score:2)
That would be a major advance on the current behaviour of just selecting a botnet at random, a system that has annoyed some users.
DCOM, COM+ anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
'Grid computing!!!111'... it's a buzzword. The technology is already available for many years, however not a lot of software uses it, if you look at the many many applications available.
Considering that the Windows platform has never had the ability to parallel compute in the past, it leaves great potential to the company's operating system development.
I don't know how much 'ReeprFlame' knows about windows, but it can't be a lot.
Re:DCOM, COM+ anyone? (Score:2, Troll)
Nope, shut up and go back to playing with the hot wheels you got for christmas.
clustered filesystem (Score:2)
Repeat After Me (Score:2, Informative)
Windows does not have clustering!
Although they may have the capability of real clustering some day they do not have that capability today no matter how much your resident MCSE talks about his great exchange clusters etc. Windows can load balance and it can provide failover and it can run some distributed processing software but it cannot natively cluster.
Linux on the other hand has the tools available to run a true cluster, failover, load balancing and
But can it run from a cd? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Hello! Editiors, are you awake? (Score:2)
Research grid systems are mostly *nix (Score:2)
Fact of the matter is they have a pretty hard uphill battle ahead of them. The research computing community is as pro-linux and UNIX as any zealot here on slashdot.
Nearly the entire U.S. goverment uses UNIX (mostly LINUX actually) within the supercomputing realm. DOE and NSF's supercomputing centers all run LINUX.
We'll know how serious they
Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) (Score:2, Informative)
Clustering Solutions for Windows NT:
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/Art
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
http://research.microsoft.com/users/gray/Wolfpa
I can't be the only one that had this book.
hmm not 4 me.. (Score:2)
Alittle petpeeve (Score:2)
Could they change that idea, please?
Re: Leaking as a business tactic (Score:5, Funny)
> Seems to me this is a deliberate leak to create uncertainty in customer's minds and block any adoption of *nix for grid computing.
That, or they're priming consumers to accept the idea that it will take a whole rack of computers to run the next version of Windows.
Re: Leaking as a business tactic (Score:2)
Wait until you see the recommended (as opposed to minimum) equipment. ;-)
...
Besides, it seems flaky enough when it's just one machine. I can just see a group of them collectively borking each other at random times for no discernable reason.
"You're other computer has done something, reboot now?" Doh!
Re:Not a good idea (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to networking and security in NT, sure the WIN32 part is troublesome to keep secure, but NT in itself has no such problems.
Re:Not a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest of the OS has way to much backwards compatibility to be able to strip things out.
Linux can run on clusters because you can install only those chunks that you need. in Windows every processor would also have to run the entire GUI. Even if it is never used.
Why do you think Longhorn is getting a full command line shell setup?
since when are programs ran when they're not used? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. First of all you can set cmd.exe as the shell instead of explorer.exe, second of all, if you don't hook up a monitor or log in, the shell is swapped out pretty fast, and doesn't get any cpu cycles.
Re:since when are programs ran when they're not us (Score:2)
Now for the second.
Are their DOS only based utilities to edit registry settings? since everything in windows is configured from the registry how do you edit those settings?
How do you change the hardware settings?
Re:since when are programs ran when they're not us (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, they're in the resourcekit for windows 2000/2003/XP (and a lot of other command line tools)
But you don't have to do this, you can for example remotely login using terminal services for admin usage, even if the server doesn't have monitor,mouse and keyboard attached. But if you want to config windows using a commandline, you can.
rescanning hardware c
Re:Not a good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to networking and security in NT, sure the WIN32 part is troublesome to keep secure, but NT in itself has no such problems.
Flamebait? Please mods, this is the reason slashdot is losing readership. It's difficult to have a decent discussion, when all opposing views to the group opinion (right or wrong) are essentially censored down to obscurity.
Re:Not a good idea (Score:2)
This place is really going downhill; time was, you could have a reasoned, rational discussion. That's getting harder and harder all the time these days, unfortunately.
BRING BACK THE TROLLS!!! (Score:3, Informative)
No, I don't think that's the reason. Metamod takes care of clueless mods. I don't know about others, but the main reason why I read much less Slashdot than I used to is that trolls have been effectively defanged.
Slashdot was a really funny site to read when one could find humorous, although often off-topic, gems of internet wisdom inside. Most of the posts that get modded "funny" today would be better classified as "trite" or "corny
blablabla (Score:5, Insightful)
huh? COM+ is designed to be a cross-machine/process object layer with security build in PER OBJECT, even per interface. Role based, AD controlled.
Stand alone? Add-ons? ever looked closely at windows 2000 or even NT 4? No, not the shell, the core OS.
Distributed computing simply isn't part of the base design. Morphing Windows into something it isn't will once again be a task for their marketing department, not engineering.
You have definitely totally no clue whatsoever, and with you the moderators who modded you 'insightful'. 'Bullshit' would have been more like it.
Re:Not a good idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Sow's ears and silk purses, etc.
Heh... (Score:2, Funny)
A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how insignificant," said the master.
"Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
"It is," came the reply.
"Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
"It is even in a video game," said the master.
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The lesson
Re:Not a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
First: The WindowsNT line (WinNT, Win2k, Win2k3 and WinXP) isn't descended from DOS.
Second: WindowsNT had a rich file and process permissions and auditing model baked in at a low level that exceeded (and may still exceed) what Linux has today. The problem is that the default OS config was and is relatively permissive.
Re:Not a good idea (Score:2)
Windows was never just NT, despite Microsoft's wishful thinking tha we should forget their flawed past.
What the fuck do you think they had to call it "NT" for - it was supposed to mean "New Technology", anoth
Re:Not a good idea (Score:2)
there is nothing to be gained by flogging a dead horse.
ignoring the odd embedded system, the O/S line that began with DOS is extinct.
Re:Not a good idea (Score:2)
Second, you're the one who equated windows with winnt to the exclusion of all else, not me.
Third, those who ignore the past are doomed not to recognize it the next iteration - when BlowHorn comes out, etc ...
IF Microsoft ever comes out with it (target date the end of the decade), it will already be obsolete.
Re:Not a good idea (Score:3, Informative)
Linux at 10 was way ahead of Windows from Microsoft at age 10. http://www.computerhope.com/history/windows.htm [computerhope.com] 3 years in development + 7 years after its' introduction, Microsoft was just introducing Windows 3.0. I remember buying that piece of shit. The ONLY good thing about it was that it was easy to uninstall.
So, which would you rather have as a desktop - Windows 3.0 or last year's linux distro? More relevantly, who is
Re:On the other hand... (Score:2)
Since when have commercial corporations and OSS programmers been mutually exclusive?
Re:Uh, right (Score:2)
Re:Uh, right (Score:2)
So the ability of using a message handling library for parallel programming does indeed make Windows the tool for parallel computing. Now that's the point where I usually wake up laughing my a** off.
Re:Not entirely accurate (Score:3, Informative)
MS like to call it a cluster because it makes them sound 'good', but really it's crap.
Re:Been done already (Score:2)
But you do have a point. Since when is Microsoft-bashing considered to be "Trolling" on Slashdot?
Re:Written in C#? (Score:2)