Anyone else wondering why Xgrid has gone?

[mdenwood]

So around about this time last year, Apple finally included what I would call the first fully functional release of Xgrid with Lion server (there had been longstanding bugs since Leopard). And amid the joy of now having a fully functional incredibly useful distributed computing system that I could successfully encourage half of our college staff to contribute to, there was the nagging fear of seeing the word 'deprecated' in some of the key Xgrid systems. But I naively thought it was a mistake, that Apple would be crazy to go to all the trouble of fixing Xgrid if it had no future, and I set up our systems around it anyway. It turns out that Apple are indeed crazy .... unless there is some grand plan that I don't know about and Xgrid will be released as a separate entity soon (I'm not hopeful).

So now I am wondering whether to try and hack the relevant client Xgrid services from Lion to Mountain Lion installs (we can leave the server at Lion anyway), or just to upgrade the cluster we have to Linux and accept the massive loss in 'part time' donations of workstation systems from my colleagues... What Linux distribution are people using these days?

 

[dyn]

Quite simply OS X is a great desktop OS but absolute hell in the server area. It seems that Apple is starting to recognize that and leave the server stuff to others that are capable of making such products. I just wish they completely dropped it and switched to making sure their desktop and mobile stuff work with things like AD. There is more future in having tools to manage OS X/iOS in a Windows environment than a complete OS X server imo.

Anyway, I think Xgrid is one of those products that have been surpassed by other grid computing tools/setups. What these setups runs is entirely dependant on your requirements and preferences. Some like Debian, others like Ubuntu (which has great certification stuff and hardware support, better than Debian in these areas), SUSE or CentOS. The latter 2 having the most support from others like Dell (especially Red Hat stuff like CentOS). I think there are also some distros specifically for grid computing.

 

[ReddestDream]

Quite simply OS X is a great desktop OS but absolute hell in the server area. It seems that Apple is starting to recognize that and leave the server stuff to others that are capable of making such products. I just wish they completely dropped it and switched to making sure their desktop and mobile stuff work with things like AD. There is more future in having tools to manage OS X/iOS in a Windows environment than a complete OS X server imo.

I 100% agree!