Linux Cluster for Batch Image / Photo Resizing using Imagemagick
 

I was considering stealing some cycles from an old P4 Box I have set up as a NAS, my Core 2 Duo Laptop, and my Core Duo Mac Mini. Here is the detail on each.

• NAS (single core P4 1.8 Ghz) 512 Mb Ram / Ubuntu / Striped RAID Array
• Core 2 Duo Laptop (2.1 Ghz) 3 GB Ram / Vista / 7200 RPM HD
• Core Duo Mac Mini (1.8 Ghz) 2 GB Ram / Mac OS X 10.4 / 5400 RPM HD

What I would like to do is install VirtualBox create a Virtual Machine on each and then cluster all three together over a 100M/s wired LAN. I want to use this cluster to transcode movies and music---but much more importantly i want to process 10,000's of jpg's using imagemagick once i get this set up.

Some questions before I get started...

1. Which distro would work best for this?
2. What do you think the bottlenecks will be for this?
3. Pros/Cons

Is there A Better Solution?

Thanks in advance!!!!

bump - I would love to do this but really need some help