[Beowulf] RE: Capitalization Rates - How often should you replace a cluster? (resent - 1st sending wasn't posted ).

[Huw Lynes]

On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 12:33 -0800, Greg Lindahl wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:57:42AM -0500, Mark Hahn wrote:
> 
> > I guess our premises are quite different.
> 
> Yes, they are. Hence your statement about "obviously burning money"
> was a bit of an over-generalization ;)
> 
> There are HPC systems that want UPSes, namely ones that do
> mission-critical things, like weather forecasts, and spooky work.
> Most university HPC systems don't fall into that category. Most
> business websites do fall into the UPS category. But other than that,
> my cluster looks pretty much like an HPC cluster, albeit one with
> only gbit ethernet and lots of local disk.
> 

Our new HPC data-centre is completely UPSed. With the UPS sized to
bridge to the diesel generator that protects the entire building. We may
be a slightly special case in that the mains in Cardiff is horrifically
dirty. We've seen very expensive pieces of killed by power spikes on a
couple of occasions. 

Our current monitoring shows the UPS cutting over to battery at least
twice a month. So at least in our instance UPS protection is worth every
penny.



-- 
Huw Lynes                       | Advanced Research Computing
HEC Sysadmin                    | Cardiff University
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