How can i connect two or more machines via tcp cable to form a network grid?

Question

How can i connect two or more machines to form a network grid and how can i distribute work load to the two machines?

What operating systems do i need to run on the machines, and what application should i use to manage the load balancing?

NB: I read somewhere that google uses cheap machines to perform this fete, how do they connect two network cards( 'Teaming' ) and distribute load across the machines?

Good practical examples would serve me good, with actual code samples.

Pointers to some good site i might read this stuff will be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

There are many different approaches to parallel processing, and many types of system architectures you could use.

For commodity systems, there are clusters and grids, or you can even form a single system image from several pieces of commodity hardware. There is of course also load balancing, high availability, failover, etc.

It's pretty much impossible to answer this question without more detail. What exactly do you want to with these systems? The answer is very highly dependent on the application.

Answer 2

You might want to have a look at some of the stuff to do with Folding At Home and the SETI project, and some of their participants blogs, here is a pretty amazing cluster that a guy built in an IKEA cabinet:

http://helmer.sfe.se/

Might give you some ideas.

Answer 3

An excellent place to start is with the Beowulf project:

http://www.beowulf.org/

Basically an opensource cluster built on the Linux OS.

Cheers,

-Richard

Answer 4

The question is too abstract.

One of the (imaginable) ways is to use MPI - a framework for parallel programming, the Wikipedia page includes examples in C++, and there are bindings for other languages.

Answer 5

There are several software solutions in this expanding market. The term "cloud computing" is certainly gaining traction to describe what you want to do. Are you wanting a service, or do you want to run it in house?

I'm most familiar with Appistry EAF - Runs on commodity based hardware. Its available as a free download. Runs on windows or linux.

Another is GoGrid - I believe this is only available as a service, but I'm not as familiar with it.