MOSIX is a management system that allows a Linux cluster or a Grid of clusters to perform like a single computer with multiple processors. MOSIX is particularly suitable to run intensive computing and applications with moderate amounts of I/O.
Its main feature is to make all the connected (participating) nodes perform like a single computer with multiple processors, almost like an SMP.
Users can run parallel (and sequential) applications by creating multiple processes, then letting MOSIX seek resources and automatically migrate processes among nodes to improve the overall performance, without changing the run-time environment of migrated processes.
MOSIX is fully POSIX compatible. It provides applications with a run-time environment that is identical to that provided by standard Unix, so there is no need to change or even link applications with any special library.
MOSIX was originally developed to manage a single, e.g. private cluster. Recently, it was extended with new features that could make sets of independent nodes, collectively called a MOSIX grid, run as a federated system of cooperative nodes.
Specifically, a MOSIX grid consists of one or more physical clusters, e.g., in different departments, or a collection of independent servers and/or workstations that could belong to different users, as well as any combination of the above configurations.
The goal of a MOSIX grid is to allow owners of such nodes to share their computational resources from time to time, while still preserving the autonomy of each owner to disconnect its nodes from the grid at any time without sacrificing migrated processes from other clusters.
Due to network latencies, MOSIX is suitable to run compute intensive and other applications with moderate amount of I/O over fast networks. Tests of MOSIX show that the performance of several such applications over a 1Gb/s campus grid is nearly identical to that of a single cluster.
Another key requirement for a safe computing is a guarantee that the network is trusted and secure. Since nowadays these requirements are standard within clusters and enterprise intra-organizational grids, e.g., over VPNs, we reccomand the use of MOSIX in such cases. Other than the above safety requirements, nothing prevents the use of MOSIX in any other grid.
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