Subject: Re: CCL:Origin300, Linux Cluster

From: Christoph Steinbeck <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002 10:28:17 +0200

Manuel Melle-Franco wrote:
>>I can only support this.
>>And I would also suggest using no no-name, garage-built hardware.
> 
> 
> Under which basis? If you want to get the best prize/performance ratio, 
> this is the best choice, full stop!. You got to study in deep all
> possibilities, but regardless...

Sure. The basis for my suggestion is my(!) best trade-off between the 
amount of non-scientific work that I have to invest and what I finally 
get out of it scientifically.
If you run into problems with your garage-built hardware (which can 
without any doubt be as good as any other hardware) you might be stuck 
with it and you might have to fix the stuff yourself.
A major brand vendor producing server hardware can just not afford 
building sh*t because otherwise they are out of business within weeks 
because the 24 h exchange support eats all there profits.
Since I could not afford being without my compute server for more than a 
couple of days, we decided to go for a brand-name hardware.
All major rack-server vendors, including ours, come and exchange your 
hardware within 24h in case of a defect. I just had this case a couple 
of days ago (processor heat death due to a damage fan) and I was really 
happy to see my server running again after 24 h without having to do 
more than a phone call.

> Just checked and best you can get for a reasonable prize there seems dual
> PIII. That was OK maybe last year, but now for not a much higher price,
> but no big brand (the ones I know, Siemens, compaq, dell, and IBM, do not
> sell AMD's and dual P4 are still too expensive). You can get dual ADM
> athlon 2000 which definitively runs faster for mainly the same prize but
> you have to renounce to the big brand name.
> 
> 
>>We are running Siemens hardware and we are very satisfied, but I think 
>>there are tons of comparable systems from other major producers.
> 
> I am pretty sure, I am also pretty sure that they are not the best
> alternative nowadays, :-)

There are always systems with newer, faster, etc., hardware. The systems 
I'm talking about are designed for stability, which might cause the 
vendors to stay with a particular hardware combination for a few month 
longer. We have had half a year of uptime with some of these and the 
reboot that interupted this was more like a vodoo idea ("hm, it might be 
good to reboot from time to time, no one knows...").

Cheers,

Chris

-- 
Dr. Christoph Steinbeck (http://www.ice.mpg.de/departments/ChemInf)
MPI of Chemical Ecology, Winzerlaer Str. 10, Beutenberg Campus, 07745 
Jena, Germany
Tel: +49(0)3641 571263 - Fax: +49(0)3641 571202

What is man but that lofty spirit - that sense of enterprise.
... Kirk, "I, Mudd," stardate 4513.3..