Hi Mohit,

I haven't looked at it in some time, but Condor is something that may 
interest you. :)

http://research.cs.wisc.edu/condor/

Garth

On 18/12/11 21:51, Mohit Sindhwani wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> There's a task that I want to do and while I can explain it to people, I
> was having trouble finding the right keywords that would lead me home
> with Google.
>
> Basically, we have 20 PCs in the office and we'd like to do some
> simulation/ test runs/ builds, etc. when CPU capacity is available. When
> there is an urgent demand, we reach "for the clouds", so to speak. But
> right now, we are just keen to use spare CPU cycles to do some random
> testing.
>
> So, what I'm looking for is something similar to SETI@Home and does this:
> * Wake up at a pre-scheduled time (say, after office hours)
> * Connect to a central job server (and optionally present credentials)
> * Ask the job server for a job
> * Download the necessary for the job
>  > this may include updating the local executable for the job
>  > this may include copying a bunch of input files/ basic data
>  > this will include copying data specific for this job
> * Set up the environment for the job - copy the executable to the
> correct place, set up the data in the correct place and input files
> * Call a batch file to run the job
> * Once done, send the results to a central server and email the job owner
> * Ask for the next job
>
> Is there any ready-made solution that would let me do this, or would
> push me in the correct direction? The client needs to run on Windows PC
> since that's what we have lying around in the office.
>
> If there's nothing, could you point me to the kind of technologies that
> I should look at... this just might be a year-end hobby project :)
>
> Thanks,
> Mohit.
>
>
>
>
>