June 2, 2008

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Sideways Thinking

So, not to completely nerd out on you, but this is neat:

Hard problem: This whole “cloud computing” thing requires that you be able to communicate in two directions with lots of machines at once: tell them what to do, yes, but also check to see what they’re up to, and if they’re still running at all.

Fun solution: Why not just treat them all like chat clients and use Jabber?

That’s an oversimplification, but I just love the idea of essentially managing a complex computing cluster via glorified IM. Here are the details from Ezra Zygmuntowic.