[Beowulf] Newbie Question: Racks versus boxes and good rack solutions for commodity hardware

[Vincent Diepeveen]

On Dec 11, 2008, at 6:51 AM, arjuna wrote:

> Hello all again:
>
> I thought I would add a little more background about myself and the  
> intended cluster. I am an artist and a computer programmer and am  
> planning on using this cluster as a starting point to do research  
> on building an ideal cluster for Animation for my own personal/ 
> entrepreneurial work. It would reside in my art studio. As an  
> artist the idea of rack mounting the commodity PCS is much more fun  
> that piling up the PCS.
>
> I was thinking of working with a local hardware friend and figuring  
> out how to screw on motherboards onto hardware type racks. Im sure  
> there are better tried and tested racks out there that are not  
> expensive. Any suggestions on the actual physical hardware for  
> constructing racks for upto 16PCs.
>

Hello Arjuna,

I'm a bit interested you mention this. When i negotiate about  
animations, which sometimes already were edits from major movies,
the hardware used is nothing more than a simple PC to produce it.  
Animation Designers work for small amounts of money,
so paying for a lot of hardware, more than some fast PC or fast  
macintosh, with 2 very good big TFT's (apple offers some fantastic
dual set of TFT's - though quite expensive for a design studio maybe).

It sure takes a couple of minutes to render animations in high  
resolutions, yet i'm quite amazed you need more hardware for this,
yes even a cluster.

Isn't some 16 core Shanghai box with a lot of RAM already total  
overpower for this?

Can you explain where you need all that cpu power for?

Best Regards,
Vincent

> Also any thoughts on racks versus piles of PCS.
>
> A lot of the posts on the internet are old and out of date. I am  
> wondering what the upto date trends are in racking commodity  
> computers to create beowulf clusters. What should i be reading?
>
> -- 
> Best regards,
> arjuna
> http://www.brahmaforces.com
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