[Beowulf] Building new cluster - estimate

[John Hearns]

On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 16:11 -0400, Joe Landman wrote:
> Ivan Oleynik wrote:
> >     vendors have at least list prices available on their websites.
> > 
> > 
> > I saw only one vendor siliconmechanics.com <http://siliconmechanics.com> 
> > that has online integrator. Others require direct contact of a saleperson.
> 

Ivan, that is what good salespeople are FOR. You use them to gain
knowledge of the latest and greatest chipsets/CPUs/doodahs. But you also
use them to tap into the knowledge of their pre-sales engineers and
delivery/integration manager.

For instance, have you thought about a site survey? Any company worth
its salt will come along and measure up height of doors, the delivery
path from the loading dock - are there stairs? Are the lifts big enough
to take a rack? Floor loading? Do you have enough Commando sockets?

And once you have a quote from a company there's nothing to say you have
to take it - unless you're following a formal tendering process of
course, but I think in this case you are not.