[rescue] Cray J90s

[Dave McGuire]

On June 11, Zach Malone wrote:
>     Glad to hear the Crays have a bunch of things going for them, I knew the
> bandwidth would shred a PC based system, but I have never heard of vector
> based computing before.  Could you elaborate?  Thanks a ton.  Is there a

  See my last big email where I attempt to explain just that.

> license agreement prohibiting users from publishing the boot guide?  Or is
> it just so scarce that its neigh impossible to find?

  I'm not sure if it's a legal thing or not.  Here's what happens.
99% of Cray installations have service contracts...that's only natural
for such an expensive & complex machine, right?  Well, one of Cray's
final responsibilities as listed most (all?) of their service
contracts is the "deinstallation" of a machine when it is to be taken
out of use.  They come to your facility, turn it off, lock all the
drive heads (if applicable), disassemble everything, pack it all up on
its pallets, and seal everything up.  When "de-installed" in this
manner, a machine is pretty easily eligible to be covered by another
Cray maintenance contract later on, if the seals on the packing
materials are still intact...because they know that their own people
were the last people to touch the hardware, and presumably left it in
a known-operational state.  It's all good up to this point.

  Now for the bad part.  While they're packing up the hardware, they
wipe the OS from the disks, grab your OS load tapes, and grab every
nice silver/gray Cray 3-ring binder they can find...and take it with
them.

  Try calling them up and asking them.  The first words you'll hear are
"what serial number please?"  And when you give it to them, they'll
ask you if you're such-and-such and the CIA or wherever your Cray came
from, and when you say no, they'll tell you to pound sand.  And guess
what?  Then they know who you are, that you have one of their
machines, and that you likely have an [unlicensed/illegal/hugely
expensive] OS load for your machine.

  Some machines never get de-installed by Cray personnel...those are
the lucky ones.

               -Dave McGuire