[R] client-server setup for R

Thu Mar 24 20:48:44 CET 2005

Running Hummingbird Exceed on the desktops would take a small proportion 
of the budget but provide full X and Windows interworking.  We regularly 
access R on remote Linux servers from Windows via PUTTY and Exceed (in 
fact I am writing this email that way from my laptop on my lap).

One comment on Reid's comment: these days I would very much advise getting 
a 64-bit server, and it is unlikely to be cost effective to buy a Xeon 
rather than AMD64.  That would put me off any form of Windows server 
unless you can acquire the appropriate 64-bit software (and R under 
Windows is not 64-bit with no suitable compiler/runtime in sight, and I 
believe the same is true of S-PLUS).

Note that the various DCOM servers do provide an R client-server solution 
under Windows.

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005, Liaw, Andy wrote:

> If I'm not mistaken, the problem of sharing applications on a Windows server
> among several users is not particular to R, but applies generally to that
> environment, and Reid's suggestion is the cheap(-est.?) way of getting
> around it.  (Windows is simply not designed for that kind of usage, whereas
> Linux, like Unix, _is_ designed for that.)  The problem is that it'd be
> difficult to cut-and-paste graphics as you could on a Windows box (although
> that might not be doable via remote desktop, either --- I don't know).
>
> I routinely run upwards of 4 different, simultaneous R sessions on my 1.6GHz
> P-M laptop with 1GB ram, along with a few other applications.  Never have
> problems as long as none of them deal with very large data.
>
> Andy
>
>> From: Huntsinger, Reid
>>
>> You have probably considered this and it's not an option, but just in 
>> case it is, I suspect you could buy a dual Xeon machine with 4 GB RAM 
>> and run Linux + Samba etc for far less than the license fees for the 
>> Windows Server OS and S+ components. (Probably a whole cluster, in 
>> fact!) Then users could use Cygwin's X server or Xvnc on their Windows 
>> desktops to run things like R on it. The setup takes a little time, but 
>> ongoing maintenance requirements are very low.
>>
>> Reid Huntsinger
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
>> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of roger bos
>> Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 10:57 AM
>> To: R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
>> Subject: Re: [R] client-server setup for R
>>
>>
>> Maybe I didn't state my question as well as I should have.  First of
>> all, this is a windows environment.  I currently run R on my desktop
>> and I also have a server that I use that the connect to using remote
>> desktop.  Each machine has 4GB of memory and is a P4.  I run R on my
>> machine and on the server so I can have two programs running at once.
>> Other people in the company don't have as much memory as I do and have
>> older machines, so they may have trouble running R on their desktop.
>> And two people can't remote desktop into the server at the same time.
>>
>> So my restated question is, how do I share my server with other useRs?
>>  If this is more of an IT question than an R question, I apologize,
>> but it seems that S+ have a server version where clients connect from
>> their desktop and submit jobs and I was wonder is there is an R
>> version.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 09:47:53 -0500, Huntsinger, Reid
>> <reid_huntsinger at merck.com> wrote:
>>> Is running R directly on the server machine and displaying
>> via X or Xvnc
>> an
>>> option?
>>>
>>> Reid Huntsinger
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
>>> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of roger bos
>>> Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 9:28 AM
>>> To: R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
>>> Subject: [R] client-server setup for R
>>>
>>> I am currently the only use-R at my company, but they are
>> considering
>>> buy a more powerful server and letting multiple people use it.  They
>>> asked me if R supports client-server setups.  I know S+ has a server
>>> version that does that.  I didn't find anything about that on CRAN,
>>> but hopefully someone can correct me.
>>>
>>> I did see some stuff about R web servers
>>> (http://franklin.imgen.bcm.tmc.edu/R.web.servers/ )
>>> and that looked very interesting, but I don't know which one is best
>>> and I don't want to spend all my time in HTML programming to make
>>> front ends of all the users.  If I have no choice but to go the web
>>> server route, which one is the most mature?
>>>
>>> If I can't show them a pluasible solution, IT will make use buy S+
>>> server and I will have to modify all my code to make it work.  I
>>> really enjoy working in R.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Roger J. Bos
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
>>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>>
>>>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595