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Question:

How MOSIX supports Virtual Organizations (VOs)

Answer:

A VO is a set of clusters (servers and workstations) whose owners wish to share their computing resources from time to time in a flexible way.

MOSIX2 provides the following features to manage VOs:

  1. Support of disruptive configurations: clusters can join or leave the grid at any time.
  2. Clusters could be shared symmetrically or asymmetrically. For example, the owner of cluster A can allow processes originating from cluster B to move in but not processes originating from cluster C.
  3. A run-time priority for flexible use of nodes within and among groups. For example, to partition a cluster among different users.
  4. Each cluster owner can assign priorities to processes from other clusters. For example, the owner of cluster A can assign higher priority to processes from cluster B and lower priority to processes from cluster C. This way, when guest processes from cluster B wish to move to cluster A, they will push out guest processes from cluster C (if any).
  5. Local and higher priority processes force out lower priority processes.
  6. Migrated processes to/from a disconnecting cluster are moved out/back, so that long-running migrated processes are not killed.