power control

[Ray Muno]

We are using a variety of Baytech power control units in our 2 clusters.

We have 3 RPC28 units powering 48 1U Dual PIII machines in 2 racks.  They
have 30A inputs and 21 outlets (20 controlled, 1 always on). With the Dual
PIII boxes, I can only run 16 from each strip.  Each strip is divided in to
a pair of 15A segments, 8 machines per segment. At full load, 10 machines
was too much for a 15A segment.  I was really suprised at the increase in
power draw under load when we first started running these.

In addition, there are 2 RPC4-20 running the disk arrays, server boxes and
ethernet and Myrinet switches in the 2 racks. All told, 130A availble in
the 2 racks, all pretty well utilized.

We also have a pair of RPC3-20 powering 2 racks of Alpha machines. These
have ethernet interfaces but we decided later it was not worth the added 
cost.

I could not be happier with these units.  They can be configured to stage
the startup of the machine in sequence so you do not try and power up 48
machines all at one time. 

On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 03:15:37PM +0200, Steffen Persvold wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Manel Soria wrote:
> 
> >
> > We need a power control unit for our 72 nodes cluster. My first
> > idea was to do it ourselves with a digital i/o card and a set of relais, but
> > I can't find such a card for Linux.  Actually, I have an ISA card that
> > is perfect for this application but for some reason with PCI bus it
> > is more difficult. Also, it seems that the "normal" solution is to buy a
> > comercial APC system.
> >
> > Any experiences with in-house made power controls ? Would you
> > recomend us to buy the APC product ?
> >
> 
> We've had success with the Baytech (www.baytechdcd.com) RPC-3 units. The
> only disadvantage is that they only have 8 controllable ports (which
> means that you need 9 of them...).
> 
> Regards,
>  --
>   Steffen Persvold   | Scalable Linux Systems |   Try out the world's best
>  mailto:sp at scali.com |  http://www.scali.com  | performing MPI implementation:
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> 
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 Ray Muno                           http://www.aem.umn.edu/people/staff/muno
 University of Minnesota                          e-mail:   muno at aem.umn.edu
 Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics               Phone:     (612) 625-9531
 110 Union St. S.E.		                     FAX:     (612) 626-1558
 Minneapolis, Mn 55455			

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