[Beowulf] New member, upgrading our existing Beowulf cluster

[Lux, Jim (337C)]

From: beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org] On Behalf Of Ross Tucker
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 1:54 PM
To: beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: [Beowulf] New member, upgrading our existing Beowulf cluster

Greetings!

I'm a new member to this list, but the research group that I work for has had a working cluster for many years. I am now looking at upgrading our current configuration. I was wondering if anyone has actual experience with running more than one node from a single power supply. Even just two boards on one PSU would be nice. We will be using barely 200W per node for 50 nodes and it just seems like a big waste to buy 50 power supply units. I have read the old posts but did not see any reports of success.

Best regards,
Ross Tucker

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Unless your time is free, it's probably not cost effective.

You'd have to come up with the following things:
 Packaging that accommodates two boards.
 Cabling from the PSU to the board that splits the power to two destinations
 Somehow managing the power on/standby/off controls coming from the mobo to the PSU
 Making sure that any voltage sequencing requirements are met.
 Making sure that with your new cabling, you meet the voltage regulation requirements.

There's also the issue of EMI/EMC compliance, if you are concerned about such things.


Given the low cost of power supplies, particularly in large quantities, and the ability to use commodity (low price) packaging in the traditional 1 PSU per mobo configuration, you'd have to have a really good reason to consider this.

Jim Lux