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Low Overhead Clustering Software

1 points by morpheos137 4y ago

Is there any low level software for 32 bit x86 that just does clustering and presents the cluster as a single virtual machine with many cores and share memory, disk. Basically I am looking to take a bunch of x86 systems tie them together to make a unified virtual machine and then run a higher level OS on the virtual machine as if it was one computer. Local node RAM would appear as cache for the local CPU. I am aware I can install linux on each node and make a beowulf cluster but I am wondering if there is a cleaner, lower level solution. This is a hobbyist project at this point.

jmillikin 4y ago
I doubt there's any such software under active development, because the only entities that run large clusters would be (1) uninterested in 32-bit x86 and (2) want to avoid the reliability problems inherent in a pseudo-unified view of a multi-machine system. Your best bet might be to hack something together on top of QEMU. You could represent each physical machine as a NUMA node, and maybe use iSCSI for persistent storage. Note that this would imply full virtualization (not VTx), so the performance would be dreadful. Google suggests the GiantVM project (https://giantvm.github.io/ https://giantvm.github.io/) is an attempt at this. It's a years-old snapshot for a research paper, but you might be able to use it as a starting point. > I am aware I can install linux on each node and make a beowulf cluster > but I am wondering if there is a cleaner, lower level solution. As general advice, be really careful about conflating "low level" and "clean". Most architectures benefit from layers of abstraction. If you want to build a distributed VMM and make it host a 200-core 32-bit x86 then that's about as far from "clean" as you can get. It'd be much better, architecturally, to run a distributed process scheduler such as Kubernetes that can directly represent the physical machines.
kyrmyska 4y ago
This is a failed approach that was tried many many times and never worked. Just do beowulf clusters and be happy. No need for VMs either.
yuppie_scum 4y ago
Will Minikube run on 32bit?

1 points by morpheos137 4y ago

jmillikin 4y ago

I doubt there's any such software under active development, because the only entities that run large clusters would be (1) uninterested in 32-bit x86 and (2) want to avoid the reliability problems inherent in a pseudo-unified view of a multi-machine system. Your best bet might be to hack something together on top of QEMU. You could represent each physical machine as a NUMA node, and maybe use iSCSI for persistent storage. Note that this would imply full virtualization (not VTx), so the performance would be dreadful. Google suggests the GiantVM project (https://giantvm.github.io/ https://giantvm.github.io/) is an attempt at this. It's a years-old snapshot for a research paper, but you might be able to use it as a starting point. > I am aware I can install linux on each node and make a beowulf cluster > but I am wondering if there is a cleaner, lower level solution. As general advice, be really careful about conflating "low level" and "clean". Most architectures benefit from layers of abstraction. If you want to build a distributed VMM and make it host a 200-core 32-bit x86 then that's about as far from "clean" as you can get. It'd be much better, architecturally, to run a distributed process scheduler such as Kubernetes that can directly represent the physical machines.

kyrmyska 4y ago

This is a failed approach that was tried many many times and never worked. Just do beowulf clusters and be happy. No need for VMs either.

yuppie_scum 4y ago

Will Minikube run on 32bit?