Cluster Poll Results (tangent into OS choices)

[Erwan Velu]

> Hmm... Let's take the case of a 1000 node system.  If we assume a
> $3000/node cost (probably low once rack, UPS, hardware support, and
> interconnect are added in), we arrive at an approximate hardware cost of
> $3,000,000.  If we were to use the RHEL WS list price of $179/node, we
> get $179,000 or about 6% of the hardware cost.  That is assuming RedHat
> will not provide any discount on large volume purchases (unlikely).  Is
> 6% unreasonable?    
6% is reasonable but for a clustering awared distribution not for a
general use distro.

> What are the alternatives?

[...]
> - Mandrake - Mandrake has their clustering distribution, which could be
> a good possibility, but the cost is as high or higher than RedHat.  
We've already talk about that on this mailing list.
http://www.beowulf.org/pipermail/beowulf/2003-September/008032.html
CLIC & MandrakeClustering are not comparable with RedHat because we
really offer a Linux distribution specially redesigned for the
clustering (tools, installation, configuration has been made for meeting
the clustering needs).

> The cluster management portion of the software stack would be great to
> have integrated in to the product, but if third party vendors (Linux
> Networx, OSCAR, Rocks, etc...) can provide the cluster management
> portion on top of the distribution, a solution can be found.  In some
> ways this is even better since your cluster management decision is
> independent of the OS vendor.
Our vision is to provide a real distribution based on a generalist distro (MDK 9.0)
with a lots of applications and modifications for the cluster. For
example drakcluster helps you to manage your cluster (add/remove nodes
or users in maui partition, etc..)

-- 
Erwan Velu
Linux Cluster Distribution Project Manager
MandrakeSoft
43 rue d'aboukir 75002 Paris
Phone Number : +33 (0) 1 40 41 17 94
Fax Number   : +33 (0) 1 40 41 92 00
Web site     : http://www.mandrakesoft.com
OpenPGP key  : http://www.mandrakesecure.net/cks/ 

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