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MOSIX is a proprietary
distributed operating system A distributed operating system is system software over a collection of independent software, networked, communicating, and physically separate computational nodes. They handle jobs which are serviced by multiple CPUs. Each individual node holds a ...
. Although early versions were based on older
UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
systems, since 1999 it focuses on
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
clusters and
grid Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Common usage * Cattle grid or stock grid, a type of obstacle is used to prevent livestock from crossing the road * Grid reference, used to define a location on a map Arts, entertainment, and media * News g ...
s. In a MOSIX cluster/grid there is no need to modify or to link applications with any library, to copy files or login to remote nodes, or even to assign processes to different nodes – it is all done automatically, like in an SMP.


History

MOSIX has been researched and develope
since 1977
at The
Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...
by the research team of Prof. Amnon Barak. So far, ten major versions have been developed. The first version, called MOS, for ''Multicomputer OS'', (1981–83) was based on Bell Lab's
Seventh Edition Unix Seventh Edition Unix, also called Version 7 Unix, Version 7 or just V7, was an important early release of the Unix operating system. V7, released in 1979, was the last Bell Laboratories release to see widespread distribution before the commercial ...
and ran on a cluster of
PDP-11 The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, ...
computers. Later versions were based on
Unix System V Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...
Release 2 (1987–89) and ran on a cluster of
VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The V ...
and NS32332-based computers, followed by a
BSD/OS BSD/OS (originally called BSD/386 and sometimes known as BSDi) is a discontinued proprietary version of the BSD operating system developed by Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDi). BSD/OS had a reputation for reliability in server roles; the reno ...
-derived version (1991–93) for a cluster of 486/Pentium computers. Since 1999 MOSIX is tuned to
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
for
x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...
platforms.


MOSIX2

The second version of MOSIX, called MOSIX2, compatible with Linux-2.6 and 3.0 kernels. MOSIX2 is implemented as an OS
virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...
layer that provides users and applications with a
single system image In distributed computing, a single system image (SSI) cluster is a cluster of machines that appears to be one single system. The concept is often considered synonymous with that of a distributed operating system, but a single image may be presented ...
with the Linux run-time environment. It allows applications to run in remote nodes as if they run locally. Users run their regular (sequential and parallel) applications while MOSIX transparently and automatically seek resources and migrate processes among nodes to improve the overall performance. MOSIX2 can manage a
cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Asteroid cluster, a small asteroid family * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study t ...
and a multicluster (
grid Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Common usage * Cattle grid or stock grid, a type of obstacle is used to prevent livestock from crossing the road * Grid reference, used to define a location on a map Arts, entertainment, and media * News g ...
) as well as workstations and other shared resources. Flexible management of a grid allows owners of clusters to share their computational resources, while still preserving their autonomy over their own clusters and their ability to disconnect their nodes from the grid at any time, without disrupting already running programs. A MOSIX grid can extend indefinitely as long as there is trust between its cluster owners. This must include guarantees that guest applications will not be modified while running in remote clusters and that no hostile computers can be connected to the local network. Nowadays these requirements are standard within clusters and organizational grids. MOSIX2 can run in
native mode In computing, native software or data-formats are those that were designed to run on a particular operating system. In a more technical sense, native code is code written specifically for a certain processor. In contrast, cross-platform software ...
or in a
virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...
(VM). In native mode, performance is better, but it requires modifications to the base
Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...
, whereas a VM can run on top of any unmodified operating system that supports virtualization, including
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
,
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
and
Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
. MOSIX2 is most suitable for running compute intensive applications with low to moderate amount of
input/output In computing, input/output (I/O, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, possibly a human or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals ...
(I/O). Tests of MOSIX2 show that the performance of several such applications over a 1 Gbit/s campus grid is nearly identical to that of a single cluster.


Main features

* Provides aspects of a single-system image: ** Users can login on any node and do not need to know where their programs run. ** No need to modify or link applications with special libraries. ** No need to copy files to remote nodes. * Automatic resource discovery and workload distribution by process migration: ** Load-balancing. ** Migrating processes from slower to faster nodes and from nodes that run out of free memory. * Migratable sockets for direct communication between migrated processes. * Secure run time environment (sandbox) for guest processes. * Live queuing – queued jobs preserve their full generic Linux environment. * Batch jobs. * Checkpoint and recovery. * Tools: automatic installation and configuration scripts, on-line monitors.


MOSIX for HPC

MOSIX is most suitable for running HPC applications with low to moderate amount of I/O. Tests of MOSIX show that the performance of several such applications over a 1 Gbit/s campus grid is nearly identical to that of a single cluster. It is particularly suitable for: * Efficient utilization of grid-wide resources, by automatic resource discovery and load-balancing. * Running applications with unpredictable resource requirements or run times. * Running long processes, which are automatically sent to grid nodes and are migrated back when these nodes are disconnected from the grid. * Combining nodes of different speeds, by migrating processes among nodes based on their respective speeds, current load, and available memory. A few examples: * Scientific applications –
genomic Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...
,
protein sequence Protein primary structure is the linear sequence of amino acids in a peptide or protein. By convention, the primary structure of a protein is reported starting from the amino-terminal (N) end to the carboxyl-terminal (C) end. Protein biosynthesi ...
s,
molecular dynamics Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation method for analyzing the physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a fixed period of time, giving a view of the dynamic "evolution" of the ...
, quantum dynamics,
nano-technology Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal o ...
and other parallel HPC applications. * Engineering applications – CFD,
weather forecasting Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology forecasting, to predict the conditions of the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia a ...
,
crash simulation A crash simulation is a virtual recreation of a destructive crash test of a car or a highway guard rail system using a computer simulation in order to examine the level of safety of the car and its occupants. Crash simulations are used by autom ...
s, oil industry,
ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficien ...
design, pharmaceutical and other HPC applications.


MOSIX4

MOSIX4 was released in July 2014. As of version 4, MOSIX doesn't require kernel patching.


openMosix

After MOSIX became
proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...
in late 2001, Moshe Bar forked the last free version and started the
openMosix openMosix was a free cluster management system that provided single-system image (SSI) capabilities, e.g. automatic work distribution among nodes. It allowed program processes (not threads) to migrate to machines in the node's network that ...
project on February 10, 2002. On July 15, 2007, Bar decided to end the openMosix project effective March 1, 2008, claiming that "the increasing power and availability of low cost multi-core processors is rapidly making single-system image (SSI) clustering less of a factor in computing". These plans were reconfirmed in March 2008. The LinuxPMI project is continuing development of the former openMosix code.


Further reading


MOSIX4

* A. Barak and A. Shiloh
The MOSIX Cluster Management System for Distributed Computing on Linux Clusters and Multi-Cluster private Clouds
white paper, 2016. * A. Barak and A. Shiloh
MOSIX Administrator's, User's and Programmer's Guides and Manuals. Revised for MOSIX-4.3
2015.


MOSIX2 for Linux 2.6

* Meiri E. and Barak A.
Parallel Compression of Correlated Files
Proc. IEEE Cluster 2007, Austin, Sept. 2007. * Amar L., Stosser J., Barak A. and Neumann D.
Economically Enhanced MOSIX for Market-based Scheduling in Grid OS
Workshop on Economic Models and Algorithms for Grid System (EAMGS 2007), 8th IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. on Grid Computing(Grid 2007), Austin, Sept. 2007. * Amar L., Barak A., Levy E. and Okun M.
An On-line Algorithm for Fair-Share Node Allocations in a Cluster
Proc. 7-th IEEE Int. Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid '07), pp. 83–91, Rio de Janeiro, May 2007. * Amar L., Barak A., Drezner Z. and Peer I., Gossip Algorithms for Maintaining a Distributed Bulletin Board with Guaranteed Age Properties. TR, 2006. * Barak A., Shiloh A. and Amar L.
An Organizational Grid of Federated MOSIX Clusters
Proc. 5-th IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and Grid (CCGrid '05), Cardiff, May 2005 . * Barak A. and Drezner Z., Gossip-Based Distributed Algorithms for Estimating the Average Load of Scalable Computing Clusters and Grids. Proc. 2004 Int. Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (PDPTA'04), Las Vegas, NV, June 2004.


MOSIX for Linux 2.2 & 2.4

* Okun M. and Barak A.
Atomic Writes for Data Integrity and Consistency in Shared Storage Devices for Clusters
Journal of Future Generation Computer Systems, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 539–547, May 2004. * Amar L., Barak A. and Shiloh A.
The MOSIX Direct File System Access Method for Supporting Scalable Cluster File Systems
Cluster Computing, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 141–150, April 2004. * Keren A. and Barak A.
Opportunity Cost Algorithms for Reduction of I/O and Interprocess Communication Overhead in a Computing Cluster
IEEE Tran. Parallel and Distributed Systems, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 39–50, January 2003. * Amar L., Barak A. and Shiloh A., The MOSIX Parallel I/O System for Scalable I/O Performance. Proc. 14-th IASTED Int. Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems (PDCS 2002), pp. 495–500, Cambridge, MA, Nov. 2002. * Amir Y., Awerbuch B., Barak A., Borgstrom R.S. and Keren A.
An Opportunity Cost Approach for Job Assignment in a Scalable Computing Cluster
IEEE Tran. on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Vol. 11, No. 7, pp. 760–768, July 2000. * McClure S. and Wheeler R.
MOSIX: How Linux Clusters Solve Real World Problems
Proc. 2000 USENIX Annual Tech. Conf., pp. 49–56, San Diego, CA., June 2000. * Amar L., Barak A., Eizenberg A. and Shiloh A.,. The MOSIX Scalable Cluster File Systems for LINUX, June 2000. * Barak A., La'adan O. and Shiloh A.
Scalable Cluster Computing with MOSIX for LINUX
Proc. 5-th Annual Linux Expo, pp. 95–100, Raleigh, NC, May 1999.


MOSIX Version 1 book

* Barak A., Guday S. and Wheeler R., The MOSIX Distributed Operating System, Load Balancing for UNIX. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 672, Springer-Verlag, May 1993.


Other

* Barak A. and La'adan O.
The MOSIX Multicomputer Operating System for High Performance Cluster Computing
Journal of Future Generation Computer Systems, Vol. 13, No. 4-5, pp. 361–372, March 1998. * Barak A., Laden O. and Yarom Y., The NOW MOSIX and its Preemptive Process Migration Scheme. IEEE TCOS, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 5–11, Summer 1995. * Haban D., Wybranietz D. and Barak A., Monitoring and Management-Support of Distributed Systems, Proc. European Workshop on Progress in Distributed operating Systems and Distributed System management, pp. 110–137, Berlin, April 1989. * Barak A. and Wheeler R., MOSIX: An Integrated Multiprocessor UNIX. Proc. Winter 1989 USENIX Conf., pp. 101–112, San Diego, CA, Feb. 1989. * Barak A., Shiloh A. and Wheeler R., Flood Prevention in the MOSIX Load-Balancing Scheme, IEEE-TCOS Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 24–27, Winter 1989. * Barak A. and Kornatzky Y., Design Principles of Operating Systems for Large Scale Multicomputers, Proc. Int. Workshop on Experience with Distributed Systems, pp. 104–123, Kaiserslautern, Sept. 1987. Also, Report RC 13220, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, Oct. 1987. * Alon N., Barak A. and Manber U., On Disseminating Information Reliably Without Broadcasting, Proc. 7-th Int. Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS-7), pp. 74–81 (best conference paper), Berlin, Sept. 1987. * Barel A., NSMOS - MOS Port to the National's 32000 Family Architecture. Proc. 2nd Israel Conf. Computer Systems and Soft. Eng., Tel-Aviv, May 1987. * Barak A., Drezner Z. and Gurevich Y., On the Number of Active Nodes in a Multicomputer System, Networks, An Int. Journal, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 275–282, Fall 1986. * Barak A. and Paradise G. O., MOS - Scaling Up UNIX. Proc. Summer 1986 USENIX Conf., pp. 414–418, Atlanta, GA, June 1986. * Barak A. and Paradise G. O., MOS - a Load Balancing UNIX. Proc. Autumn 86 EUUG Conf., pp. 273–280, Manchester, Sept. 1986. * Drezner Z. and Barak A., An Asynchronous Algorithm for Scattering Information Between the Active Nodes of a Multicomputer System, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 344–351, Sept. 1986. * Barak A. and Shiloh A., A Distributed Load-balancing Policy for a Multicomputer. Software - Practice & Experience, Vol. 15, No. 9, pp. 901–913, Sept. 1985. * Barak A. and Litman A., MOS - A Multicomputer Distributed Operating System. Software - Practice & Experience, Vol. 15, No. 8, pp. 725–737, Aug. 1985. * Drezner Z. and Barak A., Efficient Algorithms for Routing Information in a Multicomputer System, Distributed Algorithms on Graphs, Carleton Univ. Press, pp. 41–48, Ottawa, Aug. 1985. * Barak A., Dynamic Process Control for Distributed Computing, Proc. 3-rd Int. Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS-3), pp. 36–40, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Oct. 1982. * Barak A., Shapir A., Steinberg G. and Karshmer A.I., A Modular, Distributed UNIX. Proc. 14-th Hawaii Int. Conf. on System Science, pp. 740–747, January 1981. * Barak A. and Shapir A., UNIX with satellite Processors. Software - Practice & Experience, Vol. 10, No. 5, pp. 383–392, May 1980.


See also

* LinuxPMI *
OpenMOSIX openMosix was a free cluster management system that provided single-system image (SSI) capabilities, e.g. automatic work distribution among nodes. It allowed program processes (not threads) to migrate to machines in the node's network that ...


Notes


External links


MOSIX homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mosix Cluster computing Grid computing Internet Protocol based network software Parallel computing Distributed operating systems