"Burke, S (Stephen)" <[log in to unmask]> writes:
> Grids are supposed to help users, the complexity and heterogeneity
> should be hidden by the middleware and not left to applications to deal
> with - that's why it's called middleware.
That's impossible. No middleware in the world¹ will make our SGI 3800
system run x86 Linux binaries.
Some differences can - and should - be hidden by the middleware, like
the exact filesystem location of the pool user's home directory.
Other differences should be *exposed* in a well-defined way by the
middleware so that jobs can adapt to them or be sent to some other
site instead. Like architecture, memory size, operating system (Hey!
Let's standardize OS names!), installed applications, and so on.
I'm sure huge subsets of the WN software could be made optional.
Indeed, it would be useful to have the option of not installing any WN
software at all and just provide the jobs with an extremely basic
POSIX environment. Then you could grid attach legacy systems by just
adding a standalone CE to them, with no need to fiddle with the
existing worker nodes. Of course, you need to make sure that only jobs
that can deal with that basic environment end up at that site.
¹ For all reasonable values of the words "no" and "middleware". 8^)
--
Leif Nixon - Systems expert
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National Supercomputer Centre - Linkoping University
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