On Thu, 2008-09-11 at 14:11 +0200, Mattias Hemmingsson wrote: > Hello > > I have one question about cluster and vmware. > I have about 10 computers they are all old once from 1g and 256 ram. > > And now im thinking of putting them all toghter in one cluster. > This cluster should be an high performing so all computers share they > performance. > > Now on this cluster i whould like to install one vmware server and make > that vmware server get the power from all these computers. > And install a os in that vmware server. > > Is this the way passible to do ? > > // matte Short answer: Not possible. At least not what you are asking for. Longer answer: If you used some sort of SSI-style[1] clustering with *very* fast inter-connects (10Gb Ethernet, Infiniband, etc...), with a lot of luck, hard work, and man-hours it may be possible. Although, I'm not sure how thread-friendly VMware Server is, or exactly how it will behave in that kind of environment. Beowulf style clusters require the program that is to be running on it programmed in a certain way utilizing an MPI[2] library. By far, the most common High Performance Clusters utilize grid-style[3] computing (think SETI, cloud computing, etc...) where things are broken down into tasks and organized to be run in discreet parts. VMware's ESX clustering capabilities[4] are *very* limited in this regard (and also expensive), which it is really coordinating loads across multiple ESX servers, that are usually pretty powerful in-of-themselves, and not distributing the load of a single guest across multiple physical machines. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this very thing... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_system_image [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Passing_Interface [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_clusters [4] http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/vc/drs.html --Tim