[Beowulf] RE: Capitalization Rates - How often should you replace a cluster? (resent - 1st sending wasn't posted ).

[Mark Hahn]

> Depends upon where they are, what they offer.  If Greg spends $3000/node, and 
> his colo costs are $1000/year then this is $83.33 per month in site AND

I guess our premises are quite different.  first, I don't see why bandwidth
would be a huge issue for HPC.  yes, perhaps that sounds strange, but our 
academic HPC organization has never worried much about border bandwidth,
and apparently without trouble.  I'm assuming, of course, that an HPC
facility will provide storage within the cluster/cloud.

another of my premises is that UPS is generally unnecessary, at least 
for compute nodes.  I have no idea how it would affect pricing at a colo,
if you said "I'd like 46U/rack with line power and 2U with UPS."  we went
UPSless because the things are rather expensive, so it would make a dent.

but the prices I saw were 500-1000/month for a 48U rack - $250/year/u.
since I'd expect to spend $3-5k/u, it's a pretty trivial cost.

I'd be interested in hearing what other people estimate for their costs
(and their border bandwidth, and whether they UPS their compute nodes)...

> similar, but on different budgets.  Colos turn this into an expense, other 
> methods turn it into capital acquisition.

for sure.  I was struggling with the fact that Greg's numbers were close
to 10x higher than I expected, given apparently sane assumptions about 
power and rent.  HPC vs search engine would certainly make a big difference.

regards, mark hahn.