[Beowulf] Re: What vendors would you be sure to check out?

[Dan Stromberg]

First of all, thanks much to all who responded!


Here's the summary I promised:

- Vendor from scalableinformatics.com indicates they are pleased with
  the Sun x86_64 systems they're selling.  They also sell some systems
  (they built?) with iWill motherboards.  They don't like Tyan's that
  much anymoe.
- Dell
- Appro
- http://www.rackable.com
- Penguin
- RocketCalc
- Another Sun x86_64 recommendation
- A third Sun x86_64 recommendation
- A fourth recommendation for Sun x86_64
- A second Penguin recommendation
- http://www.aslab.com
- Joe Landmann's company: They build'em, but they use only quality
  components
- IBM, but only at a price premium
- A recommendation against Dell, due to having only recently started
  doing AMD, and due to frequently insisting on selling a microsoft
  license with each box.  Also, they will sometimes send parts other
  than what you requested, unless you specifically say you want no
  substitutions.
- Another iWill recommendation - this time specifically for a barebones
  system
- Someone from LiquidComputing suggests LiquidComputing boxes


So in short, that's:

3  Sun x86_64
0  Dell (1 + -1)
1  Appro
1  Rackable
2  Penguin
1  RocketCalc
1  iWill
-1 Tyan
1  aslab
1  Joe Landmann's co
1  IBM
1  LiquidComputing (1 from vendor itself)


Further, on the subject of remote administration:

- A recommendation for IMPI.  Supermicro has stuff that can do IMPI 2
  and you can configure the BIOS to send BIOS info via serial, and can
  remote powerup/down via ethernet
- Someone says that Sun v20z and v40z can do IPMI and can send BIOS to
  serial.  Galaxy line is purported to do IPMI 1.5.



On Mon, 2005-12-19 at 23:01 -0800, Dan Stromberg wrote:
> If you were shopping for about 25 nodes for MPI and OpenMP, each one
> dual core and dual processor, each one 64 bit x86 to run linux, with
> remote administration including system reset and bios tweaking, what
> vendors would you make sure not to neglect checking into?
> 
> Please reply off list, and I'll summarize.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
>