[Beowulf] Sun Fire X2100 Server

[Sean Dilda]

Eugen Leitl wrote:
> I've managed to miss Sun's Galaxy and Aquarius launch,
> but today at work I learned that the Sun Fire X2100 Server
> 
> http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2530
> 
> starts at about 700 EUR (no drives, no DVD, no IPMI, 1x Opteron 146,
> 1x512 MB unbuffered ECC PC3200, but it can apparently handle non-ECC
> as well).
> 
> IPMI 1.5 module and sliding rails are about 135 EUR.
> 
> Have any of you first-hand experience with this hardware?
> Any caveats? I don't see any warts so far.
> 

Two things I noticed from looking at the specs:

Only 1 CPU socket.  It supports dual-core.  But you should be able to 
get two sockets in a 1U box.

Only supports up to 4GB of RAM.  We've already purchased some 8GB nodes 
for my cluster, so there's no way we could use a system that tops out at 
4GB.


The x4100 does look interesting.  It has two CPU sockets and supports up 
to 16GB of RAM all in 1U.  However, its completely overloaded with 
network ports and hard drive bays.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but it 
looks like something that'd drive the price up a bit.