Set up Distrubted Computing - Home Network?

[mikeo01]

Hi, so I know the concept of shifting over tasks to a local computer, but in practice I have never attempted it myself. I know how to network the whole thing up so that isn't a problem.

I have Windows 2008 R2 sitting around, but the thought of setting that up on virtualbox, it may bog everything down.

I run Windows 8, basically what I am asking is, is there any open source software out there to allow this? I only thought of it today, I am doing a University course and there is some sort of problem with networking within virtualbox on Windows 8, so I was going to use my parents laptop to do my studies, but the laptop is an i3 with 2GB and virtualbox will really bog that down.

I was also thinking about setting it up so that when I am online (when I am on my PC) that these laptops could share my resources, offload some work. And when I am offline to use their local resources instead. My parents only use small applications so bandwidth won't be a problem, it's just to utilise resources for now for my studies and then use it in future if this makes sense?

So any open source software that'll allow this, any suggestions would be appreciated


Also not just that, but it would be great to put some networking into practice, I have CCNA qualification and half way through my second year of University, so would be great to know how to use other type of software to set things up. I know how to set up servers, but I haven't been able to practice this which will come in handy for when I come out of university.


Thanks everyone for any comments/suggestions