Linux clusters born in the world of academia are sprouting legs and appear ready to march right into the enterprise, despite the growing pains facing the emerging technology.

Numerous universities, government labs, and researchers are linking hundreds of Linux servers in the hopes of reducing costs associated with high-performance computing tasks and the expensive servers that often go with them.

Although Linux does not scale well for all jobs, those tasks that can be divvied up into small pieces work well on these Beowulf clusters.

This early work has paved the way for IBM Corp., Dell Computer Corp., Oracle Corp., and a host of smaller players to develop more modest clusters than can run databases and other common business applications.

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