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Open-File Report 2004–1091

Using Mosix for Wide-Area Compuational Resources

By Brian G. Maddox

Thumbnail of and link to report PDF (103 KB)Abstract

One of the problems with using traditional Beowulf-type distributed processing clusters is that they require an investment in dedicated computer resources. These resources are usually needed in addition to pre-existing ones such as desktop computers and file servers. Mosix is a series of modifications to the Linux kernel that creates a virtual computer, featuring automatic load balancing by migrating processes from heavily loaded nodes to less used ones. An extension of the Beowulf concept is to run a Mosixenabled Linux kernel on a large number of computer resources in an organization. This configuration would provide a very large amount of computational resources based on pre-existing equipment. The advantage of this method is that it provides much more processing power than a traditional Beowulf cluster without the added costs of dedicating resources.

First posted 2004

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Suggested citation:

Maddox, B.G., 2004, Using Mosix for wide-area compuational resources: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2004–1091, 14 p., available only online at http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1091/.


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