[Beowulf] Cooling vs HW replacement

[Joe Landman]

Robert G. Brown wrote:

[...]

> BTW, you might well find that hardware salespersons will balk at
> replacing the equipment they sell you under extended service if you
> don't maintain the recommended ambient air.  So you might end up having
> to pay for a constant stream of hardware out of pocket in addition to
> the labor and downtime.  I just don't think it is worth it.

It is far better to do the job right at the outset (cooling) than asking 
the company to bankroll new nodes for you every few months.  I am not 
sure how the warranties are writting in Uraguay, but here in the states, 
they have a few clauses about not being liable for damage resulting from 
operating out of manufacturer/vendor suggested norms.

That said, I would strongly recommend reasonable cooling on the master 
node, the disks, the network and other major bits.  Replacing 
administrative infrastructure can be quite painful for end users. 
Compute nodes should be viewed as being disposable after hardware 
warranty runs out (usually 1-2 years on most components).

Always, always, always have extra memory and motherboards (and CPU fans 
and power supplies) sitting around in a box somewhere.  You will need them.

As RGB indicted, downtime is usually costly, at minimum, in terms of time.

Joe

-- 
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics LLC,
email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
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