Re: Xen - Mosix cluster

["Tom Cranbrook" <tcranbrook@australia.edu>]

>> idea.  As a side effect, the resource usage of any on OS environment is
>> also limited at a maximum by the limites on any single node machine.
(It's
>> also limited by configuration, I know.)
>
>All true.  If a node is overloaded, you might migrate some domains off it.
>

True, but the limit still remains.

Perhaps I am trying to have my cake and eat it too.  The advantages of Xen
are strong isolation of OS environments and more efficent use of resources
on large capacity machines.  The advantage of Mosix and OpenSSI is to
combine multiple machines to run an OS environment greater than a single
machine, using two different approaches.  In a sense, these systems and Xen
are at opposite purposes.  It would seem to me that putting OpenSSI 'on
top' of Zen would cancel out the benifits of Xen, and would not enhance the
benifits of SSI. (other than creating a test system for SSI.  That makes a
lot of sense.)  Mosix 'on top' of Xen is probably not useful either since
the advantage of Mosix is to move a demanding process to another machine,
not to another OS environemnt on the same machine.

If, however, Xen were on top of the stack, we may be able to achive  both
purposes.  The cluster hardware can be consolidated to support a single
base OS environment that can be distributed at the process level of
granularity.  Then Xen builds on this resource pool to provide the guest OS
environment isolation.  From Xens point of view, it would just have a way
big honker of a machine to work with.  This would also allow a high demand
OS environment to grow past the single machine limit.  This might also help
with issues of bringing nodes on and off line.

This would still leave us with a single machine speed limit for any one
proccess, plus overhead,  but ... hey  ...  one thing at a time.





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