[220] in athena10
Re: Cluster machine reset idea
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kenneth Arnold)
Thu May 29 00:20:05 2008
Message-ID: <483E2EC8.4040405@mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 00:19:20 -0400
From: Kenneth Arnold <kcarnold@MIT.EDU>
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To: Matthew S Goldstein <austein@mit.edu>
CC: Timothy G Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>, athena10@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64L.0805282159530.5667@cheshire-cat.mit.edu>
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About hardware-assisted virtualization: VirtualBox doesn't use it
because it doesn't really speed things up for them. So maybe its lack
isn't a big deal. As long as it's Intel on Intel.
Matthew S Goldstein wrote:
> However, instead of running the VMs locally, have the VM running on
> servers elsewhere. The cluster machines will have a client which
> connects to the VM, giving instant login. Once the client is
> connected, a live migration starts of the VM to the cluster machine so
> any extended login can take advantage of the local processing power.
Maybe I'm just dull, but I don't see the advantage of that scheme over
having the VMs always local (with central administration).
It occurs to me that virtualization is just a better way to go in
cluster management all around. It just enables so many things that
weren't possible before. e.g., click a button and your session transfers
to sipb-xen and keeps running while you go to class, you connect to it
on your laptop during lecture, then go to another cluster and bring it
up there. Or Athena 10 breaks some esoteric software... no problem, just
pull up the Athena 9 image and run it there. Trivial software testing
and upgrades. No more separate Windows and Linux machines either; run
anything on any of them, at the same time even. (Too bad a VM can't
grow/shrink memory usage on demand. Or can it? I noticed some things
about memory hotplug in the Linux kernel...)
Oh... what about all those Sun machines?
-Ken
