From chemistry-request $#at#$ server.ccl.net Mon Jul 8 04:28:34 2002 Received: from ns.ice.mpg.de ([195.37.47.10]) by server.ccl.net (8.11.6/8.11.0) with ESMTP id g688SXp28559 for ; Mon, 8 Jul 2002 04:28:33 -0400 Received: from [10.10.11.62] (helo=ice.mpg.de) by ns.ice.mpg.de with esmtp (Exim 3.14 #17) id 17RTsm-000701-00 for chemistry /at\ccl.net; Mon, 08 Jul 2002 10:28:32 +0200 Message-ID: <3D294D21.70302#* at *#ice.mpg.de> Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002 10:28:17 +0200 From: Christoph Steinbeck Reply-To: steinbeck[ AT ]ice.mpg.de User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: chemistry "-at-" ccl.net Subject: Re: CCL:Origin300, Linux Cluster References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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..