Any suggestions on what to do with a grid/cluster

hello all! My friend from the technology department in my school just informed me that the school is allowing him to have 5- 10 machines to do whatever he wants with them. I was asked what i think we should do. he hasn't given any specs. on what the machines will be, they could be old 933 mhz machines or 1.2 ghz optiplex's, i dont know yet. I was thinking of setting up some type of distributed computing using beowulf for linux or NLB for windows? Maybe a render farm of some sort or the creation of rainbow tables? it would be greatly appreciated if someone out there would wanna pitch in some ideas as to what we should make of this cluster.

Ive thought about this a lot lately. I have about 3-6 p2-ish machines and have been thinking of setting up a moxis/beowulf clusters here in my home. Aside from saying 'wow i did it!' I have only 2 real reasons to have a cluster in my house.

1) My room-mate and best friend is applying for school next year for video editing (he good pm me hehe) and thus has to make a portfolio about what hes done. Mini movies and such showing his skills, I thought maybe a small cluster could help him with encoding final products.

2) I remember a few years ago my brother installed some sort of software Ware you could share your spare CPU usage and crunch/process info that would help Oxford in the fight against cancer. Ive looked for the site but only found some that might be a bit shady. Ill find the link if needed.

Also I'm just thinking that if its for a school and they had linux/unix related classes or there apart of the classes you could install a clustering terminal server (or what ever you'd call it) so people new to linux/unix could use it in class without having to install it on a box?

Just some ideas, hope it helps ya.

Hi ech0

I think that the project you are referring to is "Folding@Home"? it is Stanford University.

http://folding.stanford.edu/

:)

Good site, but I think the one my brother belonged to was
The United Devices Cancer Research Project (Project sponsored by Intel and the University of Oxford) eather way, use the cluster to help one of these types of groups. p.s. your fast nilhil :)