Invitation to Cluster Users

The growth of cluster computing has been nurtured by a strong community of designers, users, and vendors. Current cluster technology however, is not without it's challenges. Issues such as best practices, standards, benchmarking, education, and third party software are often cited as "hold backs" to the continued growth of the market.

Meeting these challenges as individuals is a daunting task. However, as a community, we have the ability to identify and address these issues. ClusterMonkey.net has teamed with community leaders as a first step toward advancing the cluster market and community.

Our goal is to produce a document, called "The Cluster Agenda", which will begin to address the needs of the community. The "Agenda" is expected to be a living document updated each year by the community. Used as a guide, the Agenda will benefit both the current cluster community and those who wish to enter the community (i.e. Industrial Users, Independent Software Vendors, and Others).

The Agenda will become a road map that details best practices and help navigate the important choice points facing users of cluster technology. The Agenda will not be an attempt to standardize or pick winners.

Community input will be critical to the success of this initiative. We will be soliciting further input from the community very soon. Our goal is to include everyone and focus on what the community needs. The following are the milestone events that will be used to develop the Agenda document (tentative do to re-scheduling).

• December 2005: Launch Wiki and start creating the document.
• August 2006: Draft Version "The Cluster Agenda 2007" will be available.
• November 2006: General Release of the 2007 printed version at SC06 in Tampa.

As a member of the community, your action item is to join the conversation. Initial discussions will be collected from the on-line form and will culminate in a community release of the document. The Cluster Monkey Website and Beowulf mailing list will also serve as a source of announcements and discussion. Once the framework is established, we will begin to build out the content for a final release at the end of the year. The Cluster Agenda will be a freely available document.