[Beowulf] RE: Capitalization Rates - How often should you replace a cluster? (resent - 1st sending wasn't posted ).

[Carsten Aulbert]

Hi

Mark Hahn schrieb:

> another of my premises is that UPS is generally unnecessary, at least
> for compute nodes.  I have no idea how it would affect pricing at a colo,
> if you said "I'd like 46U/rack with line power and 2U with UPS."  we went
> UPSless because the things are rather expensive, so it would make a dent.
> 

Depends how much you want to factor in. If you include cleaner input
power, less out-time due to the UPS (highly depends on your local power
grid) and the possibility of dead hardware after a power failure it
might look better - we have a UPS which covers all our needs, for any
type of system.

> I'd be interested in hearing what other people estimate for their costs
> (and their border bandwidth, and whether they UPS their compute nodes)...

for us border bandwidth needs to be high, since we pull in TBytes of
data before any run can start. But for compute nodes: always go for
slightly outdated stuff, these went through different hardware
revisions, received most of their life-cycle's  software patches and
give you more CPU power/buck.

Cheers

Carsten