[Beowulf] Re: GPU boards and cluster servers.

[Ashley Pittman]

On Mon, 2008-09-08 at 14:58 -0400, Prentice Bisbal wrote:
> I think these trends have more to do with the cheap cost of Dell
> Hardware and Dell's sales force  and marketing to upper management than
> they do with any technical advantages Dell has over the competition.
> 
> I have no problem with Dell Hardware. There's nothing wrong with it, and
> Beowulf clusters are *supposed* to be based on affordable commodity
> hardware. I didn't see much basis for the earlier post disparaging Dell
> hardware.
> 
> However, If you're buying a "turn-key" cluster solution based on
> advertised "clustering services", I'd be cautious with *any* of the big
> vendors, where you're known mostly as a customer ID in their CRM
> database, and you're dealing with salespeople and not technical people.
> Especially if they offer any kind of "customization" -- more than
> likely, any customization will be at additional costs, and you'll still
> have to do some reconfiguration to get it set up the way yo want (and is
> therefore no longer a turn-key system). I've got a few stories, but the
> guilty shall remain nameless.

You don't have to buy Dell hardware direct from Dell, there are plenty
of people who will sell you dell nodes with value-add hardware and
software.

Ashley,