Is MAAS like a Beowulf cluster?

Question

Hi fellow ubuntu users,

I was looking into using several Ubuntu desktops as a Beowulf cluster. But this seemed complicated, or I am too lazy to get into it :) and mmost of the software is outdated. Then I stumbled unto MAAS and that looked like exactly what I was looking for.

The reason I wanted to build a beowulf cluster is so I can run a cpu heavy program on several nodes. How can I tell MAAS how to run it, or would I have to use Juju in conjunction?

Please let me now, I love the idea. Just have problems grasping the possibilities.

Thanks people!

Answer 1

Well, this is an interesting set of questions :)

First, there is no way to take a standard app and spread it across many machines to make it faster. You do have some apps which are designed to be spread across several machines, and those can be used very easily with MAAS and Juju to coordinate the deployment and operations of the distributed system. But you can't take your standard database and spread it across multiple machines magically, it needs to be a database that was designed for that kind of operation.

MAAS is the piece that will turn on servers, install the OS (Ubuntu, CentOS or Windows) and then give the machine back to you. Your configuration management tools (e.g. Chef) or model-driven operations tools (Juju) will then take the brand-new fresh OS and add all the applications and configuration you want.