[Beowulf] Suggestions for used workhorse servers

[Lux, Jim (337C)]

One might make a nice small cluster for learning purposes.  With 8 nodes,
you could do a lot of experimenting.  Even 4 nodes works, but with 8, if
your parallelization works, you get a pretty dramatic speedup.

And, when you screw up, and need to reinstall all the software everywhere,
4-8 nodes is manageable by hand.

You could also, if you have extra network cards, experiment with things
like different interconnect architectures.

There is significant value in a stack of boxes which you "own" and don't
have to account  for the use of (or lack), for that sort of "fooling
around"


For production purposes, you're probably better off buying newer
computers: Power consumption, hassles, etc.


On 6/30/11 1:33 PM, "Orion Poplawski" <orion at cora.nwra.com> wrote:

>One can find some pretty inexpensive older servers on eBay that probably
>could 
>yield a decent $/flop ratio.  I was wondering if people here had
>suggestions 
>for classic workhorse servers - basic 1U boxes that did/do pretty well be
>are 
>a couple years old at this point.
>
>Thanks!
>
>-- 
>Orion Poplawski
>Technical Manager                     303-415-9701 x222
>NWRA/CoRA Division                    FAX: 303-415-9702
>3380 Mitchell Lane                  orion at cora.nwra.com
>Boulder, CO 80301              http://www.cora.nwra.com
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