Killer Micro Question

[Glenn Tarcea]

In article <16364 at s.ms.uky.edu> randy at ms.uky.edu (Randy Appleton) writes:

#I have been wondering how hard it would be to set up several 
#of the new fast workstations as one big Mainframe.  For instance,
#imagine some SPARCstations/DECstations set up in a row, and called
#compute servers.  Each one could handle several users editing/compiling/
#debugging on glass TTY's, or maybe one user running X.
#
#But how does each user, who is about to log in, know which machine to
#log into?  He ought to log into the one with the lowest load average, yet
#without logging on cannot determine which one that is.
#

  This is not a direct answer to you question, but it may have some merit.
It sounds to me that what you are talking about is a lot like a VAXcluster.
I have often thought it would be nice to be able to cluster U**X systems
together. NFS is a nice utility, but it isn't quite what I am looking for.
  I also find it interesting that IBM has decided to go with the clustering
concept for their mainframes. Although it seems to me it would be a lot
cheaper and better for the customer to buy 10 $30,000 workstations and
cluster them together, rather than 3 $22,000,000 mainframes (run yeck! MVS)
and cluster them together.
  Perhaps if DEC can get a POSIX compliant VMS out we will be able to
cluster "U**X" systems.


  -- glenn