[MLUG] Cloud Computing

[spam spammer]

"The concept of the cloud is the future of parallel and ssi computing. You
have the ability of instantiate a cluster in minutess to do your heavy
calculations, you pay for bandwidth & processing time.  Then when you don't
need it you pack up your image & go home... much more cost and time
effective than maintaining your own cluster."

My ex used to work at NRC/CNRS the office close by to where Blue Bonnets
was.  So I can only go by what she told me about they operated.
They have a room filed with a 'cluster'. Alessandra was doing molecular
modelling, rather CPU intensive stuff for a plethora of reasons. When she
had a 'job' to process, she had to submit it to done sometime after working
hours, otherwise it would simply take over all the machine's capacity. The
cluster is set up so that it portions out its work space according to needs,
it is always on, save for particular things or events. So everyone has
access to the cluster as needed. It is the work space that is split
according to the requirements of the moment and the jobs at hand. All the
computers on the site are networking, are on line and whatever else you care
to mention. And yes, it's a Linux system.

Set up in that, or a similar fashion, I don't see where out sourcing would
be more cost effective. A large corporation that needs cluster work, would
already have all the machines and networking matériel on site! A small
company, if it needed that calculating power, would probably have a more
sizeable computer as THAT would be far better cost wise.
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