Summary: Sun Grid Engine and Ingres

Hi,

Two replies which are reproduced below. I thought Grid Engine was like Scyld
Beowulf which as I understand it lets you build one virtual computer out of
a bunch of old redundant machines by linking them together under a single
operating system, one big multi-CPU machine. Apparently its not. "Grid
Engine is a very flexible batch job queuing service" and it is more like
running commands like:

	% rsh otherbox "cd /somewhere; ./somescript" 

Thanks to Jay and Tim for setting me right.

Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Chipman
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 3:41 PM
To: Richard Mackerras
Subject: Re: Sun Grid Engine and Ingres


From my own experience with clusters of computers doing work, I have a
feeling that database tasks are inherently very poorly suited, given
that they are (inherently) very high I/O to disk, thus, to implement a
cluster solution you are looking (most likely) at some kind of SAN /
cluster disk array solution (ie, far more $$ than you are saving in not
buying a multi-cpu database server).

as for trusting a cluster / grid approach, there is no concern there in
my mind. However, I simply don't think it likely that what you want is
really an appropriate way to use a computation cluster.

(classic use of a computation cluster would be things like, grinding
through 1,000's of similar "moderately hard" (ie, measured in minutes
each) independent jobs using different input data ; grinding through
100's of "very hard" (ie, measured in hours each) independent jobs using
various input data ; etc etc.)

ie, ultimately, the nature of the problems you are doing will very
clearly determine if/how appropriate computation clusters are for
addressing the issue, as well as how well the cluster can be scaled to
do the work for you. (typically, the harder the individual job, the
better you can scale your cluster to do batches of that job :-)

Hope this helps / is vaguely relevant to your query,



Tim Chipman



-----Original Message-----
From: Jay Lessert 
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 5:34 PM
To: Richard Mackerras
Subject: Re: Sun Grid Engine and Ingres


On Wed, Aug 07, 2002 at 12:01:29PM +0100, Richard Mackerras wrote:
> Has anybody got experience of Sun Grid Engine?

Yes.  We're using it to run circuit simulation tools.  Both Linux and
Solaris servers, both Linux and Solaris clients.

> Can Ingres use it?

Not sure what you mean.  If you can go:

    % rsh otherbox "cd /somewhere; ./somescript"

...where /somewhere/somescript is a shell script that does an "Ingres
thing", then yes, Ingres can use Grid Engine.

> Should
> Ingres use it? Would you trust your Ingres data to it?
> 
> My aim would be to effectively get a second CPU on a box. If I use a
second
> box (say an Ultra 5) and use it solely as a resource for the main box (a
> Blade 100), how much extra processing power would I get? 

I'm not sure Grid Engine does what you think it does.  It does not
make a server look like a transparent extra cpu.  Grid Engine is
a very flexible batch job queueing service.

Jay Lessert             


=================================================
MY ORIGINAL POSTING


Hi,

Has anybody got experience of Sun Grid Engine? Can Ingres use it? Should
Ingres use it? Would you trust your Ingres data to it?

My aim would be to effectively get a second CPU on a box. If I use a second
box (say an Ultra 5) and use it solely as a resource for the main box (a
Blade 100), how much extra processing power would I get? 

Will summarise,

Thanks,

Richard


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