I have upwards of 30 Dell GX2xx models doing nothing. I've decided on using them to build a cluster, but I am lost as far as getting started. I've used ClusterKnoppix, and even straight OpenMosix in the past, but those projects are, very sadly, dead now.
I've checked out Xen, to an extent. I don't know if Xen is the solution I need. I'd like to have the ability to spin up a few VMs (when I need) in a server pool, with the VMs having the ability to run just off of resources in the pool, leaving me without the care of which node they run on.
I need some insight here... Thanks all!
Xen is not itself going to manage the whole cluster. It will act on every single machine to instantiate/manage/delete the VMs. You can have a look at Eucalyptus if you want to build that kind of private cloud solution with open-source software.
I would also recommend that you use OpenStack that tends to be the successor of Eucalyptus.