Each fish represents the health of a single node in a computer cluster. This particular aquarium is monitoring two clusters. Image courtesy of University of Nebraska

Think something’s fishy with one of your nodes?

You don’t need to fish for answers any more.

Get hooked on Fish Virtual Cluster Monitoring, a program that uses Ganglia to portray each node in your cluster as a fish.

Each swimmer comes complete with all the usual fishy attributes, used to describe the state of each of your nodes (watch for the ones that go belly-up and then float to the top).

Electronic grid-fish have reared their pixilated fins in various other forms, including regular appearances as part of the Globus Build-A-Service tutorial.

The program delivering the pictured fish was produced by Derek Weitzel of the University of Nebraska, Nebraska, U.S., and expands on work done by Cory Leuninghoener. It is open source and can be freely downloaded.

- Cristy Burne, iSGTW