[217] in athena10
Re: Cluster machine reset idea
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Wed May 28 20:16:47 2008
Cc: Timothy G Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>, athena10@mit.edu
Message-Id: <05CF46F4-A317-4605-B2B0-68596AC8B025@mit.edu>
From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
To: Kenneth Arnold <kcarnold@mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <483DF274.7090504@mit.edu>
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Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 20:15:57 -0400
> do cluster machines have hardware-assisted virtualization?
Yes, mostly. The 755s and some later-model 745s have chips with Intel
VT support. However, the HPs will be in the cluster for at least one
more year, and some 745s (because Dell likes to change things on a
weekly basis) deployed last year do not have Intel VT. So while it's
a neat idea, I'm not sure it's totally feasible.
Note that we (and by we, I mean me) are toying with the idea of having
Athena (whether 9.4 or a bleeding 10) available in a VM form by the
time the frosh show up, so that they can easily try it out without
having to partition their machines. We'd possibly even hand out DVDs
with VMware player and the VM at the Orientation sessions. But that's
still kind of far off, and there are some obstacles to overcome in the
meantime.
-Jon
