I'd like to build my own private computing cloud, or so-called grid.
I have access to IT classrooms with a bunch of fast computers, and I'd like to utilize that huge horsepower. (Or even just use the 3 small computers at home at the same time for the same task.)
Something like a virtual machine running distributed on all the CPU cores would be great. So that I'd have a single (virtual) OS running with ~40GB RAM, ~120GHz effective frequency and lots of storage space. I know that the network will slow down everything, but if this "resource merge" doesn't worth it because of slow network (although it's 1 Gb/s on every machine), something like BOINC, but smaller and easier would do it too. Something that distributes workunits for local nodes to crunch on.
I'd like it to be free, maybe open source, and to run on Windows and Linux nodes.
If there's no easy way, may I implement my own protocol dedicated to each computation (that could be anything from chess AI to raytracing, from fractal rendering to PI calculating) I'd like to do? Or use BOINC?
I have taken a look at Eucalyptus, but I think that would be quite an overshoot. Wouldn't BOINC be that too?
Does anyone have any good software to recommend me with which I could accomplish this?