[Beowulf] Building new cluster - estimate

[John Hearns]

On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 23:18 -0400, Ivan Oleynik wrote:

> 
> Space is not tight. Computer room is quite spacious but air
> conditioning is rudimental, no windows or water lines to dump the
> heat. It looks like a big problem, therefore, consider to put the
> system somewhere else on campus, although this is not quite
> convenient.

That's not so good. Youre going to have to get the BTU rating of the
existing air conditioning, and consider getting more unit(s) installed -
if you have an external wall the facilities people can surely drill
through it for the.

Give serious consideration to putting expensive and noisy kit like this
elsewhere on campus if your facilities people have:
a well cooled computer room / lots of spare amps / physical security -
ie. tough steel doors / environmental monitoring
Networks are fast these days, and with remote power switching you should
not need to physically visit the machine that often.



> Many thanks, this is very exciting opportunity. I can get 20 1-U units
> in 42U rack,
As I say, watch for the amount of amps you can provide per rack and the
heat density.

>  a lot of space for thermal management and other infrastructure items.
> Do you know any system integrators that can build 40-node cluster from
> Supermicro twin units?
That depends where you are physically. Have a look at