IBM ASCI White

[Brian D. Ropers-Huilman]

Bill,

I obviously don't have or know of any particulars for LLNL, but LSU
happens to be a "True Blue" shop and I can tell you about what we have:

When any of our big systems come in (SPs, S-80s, etc.) they all come
with their own power supplies (most IBM equipment has redundant
supplies), but we often have to involve Facility Services to make sure
we have the right power cables and enough power at the breaker box.

Backups: they aren't ever included in our packages, but we do
end up installing IBM's ADSM to backup our data to our IBM S/390
mainframe.

UPSs: if you're installing something that big and your machine room
doesn't have a UPS already, you're probably wrong...

Cooling: All our IBM boxen come with multiple redundant fans.

Personnel support: With any big system (new SP frame, new S-80) an IBM
Customer Engineer (CE) is on site to install and verify the system
before turning it over to us. We have an excellent relationship with our
CE and often get to do most of the touching and tweaking at the
beginning. I believe this bit is included in the purchase price.

Now if we have the system for a while and a fan or power supply or drive
dies, we also additionally pay for on-site support and that same CE will
be on site anywhere from hours to as long as a day with a replacement
part in hand to swap out the defect. This is an extra cost.

Software support: none is included in purchase price (possibly there's a
minimal N day installation support, but I don't know). We pay yet more
money for 24x7 support on IBMs AIX and a host of other systems related
applications (ADSM, PSSP, POE, LoadLeveler, etc.)


Despite my frustration with such a deep single vendor solution at LSU, I
do have to give IBM credit for the level of service they provide (of
course, with the amount of money we pay, we should get that level of
service... ;)

On Thu, 6 Jul 2000 billran at reciprocal.com wrote:
> 
> A couple questions, since I've lost the original reference.
> This is kind of targeted at those in this group who have
> experience in large-system installations.
> 
> > > > The $/GFlop is pretty good too, $8.9K/Gflop.  Has anyone
> > > > beat this?
> 
> Does the IBM "price" include
>   - power supplys, backups, UPS?
>   - cooling of any sort?
>   - what level of personnel support is included
>     in this contract?
>   - what level of software support is offered?
> 


--
Brian D. Ropers-Huilman                   (225) 388-0461 (V)
Systems Administrator                     (225) 388-6400 (F)
Office of Computing Services              bropers at lsu.edu
High Performance Computing                http://www.ropers-huilman.net/
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