space requirements

[jbbernard at eng.uab.edu]

Hi all,

We're renovating a classroom for the use of a cluster that does not yet
exist. We're hoping it will reach 1000 nodes in a couple of years, but it's
likely that it will have to grow piecemeal as funding allows.
Notwithstanding that, we hope to administer the machines as a single
cluster.

My question is: how much room (in racks, or rack-units) would you allocate
for the non-compute-node hardware, ie, the networking equipment, file
servers, backup systems, management nodes, etc, for 1000 nodes? I'm sure
this greatly depends on how we set things up, and I'm happy to be reminded
of the many variables that need to be considered. (In our case, the UPSs and
airconditioning units will be an adjacent room, so luckily they don't factor
in.) Data for existing clusters would of course also be helpful.

TIA.

-- 
Jon Bernard
Programmer Analyst
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Mechanical Engineering