CCS and Digipede: More Differences
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ast week I posted about the differences between Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 and the Digipede Network--the post generated a lot more traffic than I would have guessed. Apparently, many people have been wondering how our products differ. I said I'd follow up with more details, so here goes.Developer focus. In summary, CCS includes tools for scientific developers, the Digipede Network includes tools for enterprise .NET developers. For more details, see my previous post.
What does it run on? The biggest difference between our product and theirs is that, at its heart, CCS is an operating system (Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition). It runs on bare iron. The Digipede Network is a grid computing framework that runs on top of the operating system and on top of the .NET Framework as well. We're two floors up from CCS.
Mind your bitness! Compute Cluster Edition is built on Server 2003 x64--it only runs on 64-bit hardware. The Digipede Network runs on top of Server 2003, XP, Vista, and Server 2000--32- or 64 bit editions.
Microsoft technologies manage your machines, Digipede manages your grid. Microsoft makes tools that make it easier to manage large numbers of machines (MMC, MOM, etc). These tools are designed to help you manage computers. The Digipede Network doesn't help an administrator manage machines, it helps an administrator manage a grid. Which users can submit to which machines? What times are the desktops running grid jobs? What priority are the overnight batch runs? These are the things that the Digipede Network takes care of.
Homogeneity and heterogeneity. A cluster is nearly always a tightly coupled group of homogeneous machines: identical hardware, identical operating systems, all linked (often with a high bandwidth backplane). A grid, on the other hand, usually has a heterogeneous blend of machines: different OSs, different hardware, different connectivity.
Dedicated vs. shared. Clusters are nearly always what we refer to as "dedicated" hardware: the machines in the cluster are used purely for computation. However, grids can have any combination of dedicated hardware and "shared" hardware--that is, hardware that is used for computation on the grid but may also be used for other purposes: file servers, app servers, even desktops. Some of our customers use all dedicated hardware, but a fair number are supplementing their dedicated hardware by "cycle scavenging" from other resources in their enterprise (the white paper I linked to recently details one customer's experience with cycle scavenging).
Grid.Contains(Cluster) = true. As a side effect of the previous two points, you may realize that a grid can contain one (or many) clusters. Many of our customers have clusters as a part of their grid. Some jobs may run only on the cluster, but by using the cluster as a part of the grid, they have one comprehensive tool that has information about all of their work.
Final analysis: two great tastes that taste great together. This is the point I make over and over: these are very complementary products. The Digipede Network runs on top of CCS, extending it both in terms of capabilities (adding .NET and enterprise features) and in terms of capacity (by running loosely coupled and 32-bit jobs on other machines, ensuring that your cluster is available for those tightly coupled MPI jobs).
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