OSCAR allows users, regardless of their experience level with a *nix environment, to install a Beowulf type high performance computing cluster. It also contains everything needed to administer and program this type of HPC cluster. OSCAR's flexible package management system has a rich set of pre-packaged applications and utilities which means you can get up and running without laboriously installing and configuring complex cluster administration and communication packages. It also lets administrators create customized packages for any kind of distributed application or utility, and to distribute those packages from an online package repository, either on or off site.
Building and Promoting a Linux-based Operating System to Support Virtual Organizations for Next Generation Grids (2006-2010). The emergence of Grids enables the sharing of a wide range of resources to solve large-scale computational and data intensive problems in science, engineering and commerce. While much has been done to build Grid middleware on top of existing operating systems, little has been done to extend the underlying operating systems to enablee and facilitate Grid computing, for example by embedding important functionalities directly into the operating system kernel.
What is virtual server? Virtual server is a highly scalable and highly available server built on a cluster of real servers. The architecture of server cluster is fully transparent to end users, and the users interact with the cluster system as if it were only a single high-performance virtual server. Please consider the following figure.
"ParallelKnoppix is a modified Knoppix live CD designed for use in creating HPC clusters. You can start up PK on multiple nodes to run a cluster, and customize PK to add or remove applications. "