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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Hi Mark,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US">So you are going to revive your old 3 node cluster and expand that? I would suggest if you are looking to expand the cluster I would look at the ryzen epyc rome 2 the second generation
of these chips is quite impressive in the sense you can do double the amount of 2 single intel chips. They vary from 8 core 16 threads up to 64 core 128 threads. Also you don’t have all these issues that intel are currently facing with 7nm process as well
as the vulnerabilities. I just moved my gaming pc from a 6<sup>th</sup> gen i7 to a ryzen 5 3600 6 core 12 thread machine and im seeing a huge difference in performance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT" style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Regards,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Jonathan Aquilina<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">EagleEyeT<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Phone +356 20330099<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Sales – <a href="mailto:sales@eagleeyet.net">
<span style="color:#0563C1">sales@eagleeyet.net</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Support – support@eagleeyet.net<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">___________________________________________________________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT" style="mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US">From:</span></b><span lang="EN-US"> Beowulf <<a href="mailto:beowulf-bounces@beowulf.org">beowulf-bounces@beowulf.org</a>>
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Mark Kosmowski<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Sunday, 2 February 2020 04:21<br>
<b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:beowulf@beowulf.org">beowulf@beowulf.org</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Beowulf] First cluster in 20 years - questions about today<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT">I've been out of computation for about 20 years since my master degree. I'm getting into the game again as a private individual. When I was active Opteron was just launched - I was an early adopter of amd64 because
I needed the RAM (maybe more accurately I needed to thoroughly thrash my swap drives). I never needed any cluster management software with my 3 node, dual socket, single core little baby Beowulf. (My planned domain is computational chemistry and I'm hoping
to get to a point where I can do ab initio catalyst surface reaction modeling of small molecules (not biomolecules).)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT">I'm planning to add a few nodes and it will end up being fairly heterogenous. My initial plan is to add two or three multi-socket, multi-core nodes as well as a 48 port gigabit switch. How should I assess whether to
have one big heterogenous cluster vs. two smaller quasi-homogenous clusters?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT">Will it be worthwhile to learn a cluster management software? If so, suggestions?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT">Should I consider Solaris or illumos? I do plan on using ZFS, especially for the data node, but I want as much redundancy as I can get, since I'm going to be using used hardware. Will the fancy Solaris cluster tools
be useful?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT">Also, once I get running, while I'm getting current with theory and software may I inquire here about taking on a small, low priority academic project to make sure the cluster side is working good?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-MT">Thank you all for still being here!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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