[8012] in Release_7.7_team
Summary of past concerns about using idle cycles?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan D Reed)
Mon Apr 7 22:05:30 2014
From: Jonathan D Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
To: "release-team@mit.edu" <release-team@MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2014 02:05:22 +0000
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Can someone remind me of the historical objections to making use of idle cycles on cluster workstations? I’ve gotten a proposal from some 6.824 students to make use of idle workstations for a distributed cluster, and I want to make sure I fully understand the concerns to see how we might address them all.
Things I can think of off the top of my head:
- security concerns (in both directions — i.e. public root permits sketching on memory and processes; also ensuring the job can’t compromise the integrity of the workstation)
- nodes gracefully going online/offline
- console users always taking priority
- ensuring desync’d updates still occur in a timely manner
- allowing some machines to opt-out (e.g. podium machines should not go into full jet-engine mode during lecture because is attempting to find MD5 collisions)
-Jon
