Platform launches low-cost Linux clusters

Grid company Platform Computing has unveiled an entry-level version of its Platform Clusterware for small-scale Linux clusters at just £75 per processor.

It has also challenged Sun's grid credentials, saying its grid engine should really be called clustering software.

"A typical market for Clusterware is department-level technical computing where there is a limited budget but a budget for hardware," said James Pang, Clusterware product manager at Platform.

Although Clusterware uses grid technology, Pang said, a cluster's scope was much narrower.

"Platform's definition of a grid, which IBM supports, is multiple clusters connected together autonomously sharing information and policies. It is a much broader definition than a cluster," he said.

Platform is also targeting grid competitor Sun, which is making progress using Linux with deployment of its supported and open source grid engines.

Pang dismissed Sun's grid engine as clustering technology and added that overall cost of ownership was in Platform's favour.

Ovum senior consultant Neil Macehiter agreed that Sun's grid engines were more accurately clustering software.

"It is a fair comment. My interpretation is that N1 [Sun's roadmap for capacity-on-demand computing] is the real grid offering. Sun used to resell Platform LSF [grid technology]," he said.

Sun purchased two companies, Pirus and Terraspring, late last year, and their software for virtualised storage and resource provisioning provides the core of its grid-based N1.

The first N1 product release is due during the first quarter of 2003.

Macehiter thought Platform's best opportunity could be in academia and R&D departments with applications to exploit clusters.

Clusters manage processors as though a single server, automatically handling dynamic scheduling and load balancing across the systems with applications initiated as received.

Grids temporarily use computers' spare capacities using policies to decide scheduling priorities. They may use a mix of operating systems.