Metadata-Version: 1.0
Name: StarCluster
Version: 0.90
Summary: StarCluster is a utility for creating and managing general purpose computing clusters hosted on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Home-page: http://web.mit.edu/starcluster
Author: Justin Riley
Author-email: justin.t.riley@gmail.com
License: LGPL3
Download-URL: http://web.mit.edu/starcluster
Description: 
        StarCluster minimizes the administrative overhead associated with obtaining,
        configuring, and managing a traditional computing cluster used in research labs
        or for general distributed computing applications.
        
        StarCluster is built on top of EC2 which enables dynamically creating and
        destroying clusters of virtual machines and only paying for the time used.
        The amount per hour varies depending on the instance type and the number of
        virtual machines.
        
        StarCluster consists of a library and set of scripts that use the library. For end-users,
        the scripts are the main user interface and provide simple intuitive options for getting
        started with distributed computing on EC2 (i.e. starting/stopping clusters, managing
        software configurations, etc). For developers, the library wraps the EC2 API to provide
        a simplified interface for launching/terminating nodes, executing commands on the nodes,
        copying files to/from the nodes, etc.
        
        To get started, the user creates a simple configuration file with their account
        details and a few preferences (i.e. number of machines, instance type, EBS
        volumes to be mounted, etc). After creating the configuration file and starting
        the software, a cluster of Linux machines configured with a queuing
        system, a nfs shared /home directory, and OpenMPI is created and ready to
        go out of the box.
        
        StarCluster has been targeted for computational research labs and to support
        classrooms with computational requirements.
        
        For research labs, StarCluster is a way for graduate students and faculty to have
        an on-demand cluster.  This means students can access their research with the same hardware
        and software configurations wherever they go; even if they move to another institution.
        StarCluster also provides a way for students to experiment with a computational model
        on a cheap budget before running on local dedicated resources.
        
        In the classroom, StarCluster provides a cost effective, reliable way of managing the
        software configurations for a particular course. It also removes the majority of system
        administration concerns since the initial setup procedures have been captured in StarCluster
        and in the user's software configurations (i.e. AMI images, EBS volumes, etc). This means
        that each semester the exact computing cluster configuration can be recalled with more or
        less nodes. With this model there is also the benefit that if hardware problems occur
        it's easy to request a new set of machines in the cloud.
        
Platform: UNKNOWN
Classifier: Environment :: Console
Classifier: Development Status :: 4 - Beta
Classifier: Intended Audience :: Developers
Classifier: Intended Audience :: Education
Classifier: Intended Audience :: System Administrators
Classifier: Intended Audience :: Other Audience
Classifier: Intended Audience :: Science/Research
Classifier: License :: OSI Approved :: GNU Library or Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
Classifier: Natural Language :: English
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python
Classifier: Topic :: Education
Classifier: Topic :: Scientific/Engineering
Classifier: Topic :: System :: Distributed Computing
Classifier: Topic :: System :: Clustering
