My Web Cluster Article is back on-line

nospam@example.com (Fred Scott Thompson) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:38:17 -0700

A long time ago I wrote an article meant to be published in SysAdmin but that never happened. I published it on the web and got some interest when it was listed by Deadly.org. It was even commented on in Russian blogs which I had translated for me at work. I took my servers down a while ago but decided to put the article back up here at http://fredscottthompson.com/webcluster . The material is dated, some of the links are broken but it is still interesting what can be done with discarded hardware a little ingenuity.
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Parallel Processing - An alternative to waiting

nospam@example.com (Fred Scott Thompson) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:37:55 -0700

Ever have a batch process which takes too long? A daily job that runs 25 hours? An overnight task that takes 12 hours? Something the users want sooner?

My favorite solution is to use wireless and host on a planet with a slower rotation rate but there are problems with that approach starting with lack of rack space .

The traditional solution is Beowulf.

You say you have no Beowulf cluster for parallel processing? Your desktop support people will not let you build one out of spares?
You are doing ETL using business languges not supported by parallel processing libraries such as MPICH and MPI?

Read on - there is another way!

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