[Beowulf] New member, upgrading our existing Beowulf cluster

[Huw Lynes]

On Thu, 2009-12-03 at 10:40 -0500, Prentice Bisbal wrote:
> Hearns, John wrote:
> > 
> > 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.
> > 
> > Look at the Supermicro twin systems, they have two motherboards in 1U or
> > four motherboards in 2U.
> > 
> > I believe HP have similar.      
> 
> What I learned at SC09:
> 
> HP does make twin nodes similar to SuperMicro, but the HP nodes are not
> hot-swappable, if a single node goes down, you need to take down all the
> nodes in the chassis before you can remove the dead node. Not very
> practical. The SuperMicro nodes are definitely hot-swappable.
> 

The Supermicro 2U twin nodes with 4 mobos in each box are hot-swappable.
The 1U twin nodes with 2 mobos in each box are not.

Yes I don't understand why the 2U box isn't called "quad" either.

Cheers,
Huw

-- 
Huw Lynes                       | Advanced Research Computing
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