[rescue] DIY-blade?

[Lionel Peterson]

> From: Francois Dion <fdion at atriumwindows.com>
> Date: 2004/02/26 Thu PM 09:24:04 GMT
> To: ttlchaos at randomc.com,  The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
> Subject: Re: [rescue] DIY-blade?
>
> Eric Webb wrote:
>
> >Not that there would be much to gain for those of us with
> >home labs, but has anyone ever thought of a cheap way to
> >build a blade-like system?
>
> Blades are really only good for render farms, JBOWS (just
> a bunch of web servers), SETI and the like. What are you
> thinking of running on this?

There were the machines based on Multis MBs shoved in a big case, sharing
power supply and connectivity (starship computers used to sell them) - I guess
that for a short while, that was a viable rendering farm for CG...

And someone on the list wrote about taking SS/5 MBs and sliding a number of
them into a chassis to some end, not sure if it was real or planned...

Assuming older, non-blade technology is emplyed, I think you will run into a
few challenges (I know, only a mental exercise) - heat, power, storage, and
communications.

   Heat - most machines run hot, esp. in large numbers when they
   are concentrated into a small area it could be quite pronounced.

   Power - will each system have its own PS or will all machines
   share one common point of failure. Also, a common PS would
   most likely have to be either custom-made *or* procured
   serendipitously.

   Storage - RAM/HD, how much would you shove in each machine,
   and how would you balance local storage versus common storage,
   depending on the workload and needs of your software, this
   would have to be balanced with the comunications ability of
   the network they share.

   Communications - this becomes the real bottleneck as I
   understnad it. Ideally, yo would be handind out large enough
   packets of work such that the need for all the machines to
   communicate with a central server/scheduler could be minimized.

Anyway, it is an interesting idea, just not sure it is viable beyond the Gee
Whiz moment when it all works...

I wonder about the cluster software Sun used to offer a few years ago, couple
that with a rack full of Ultra 2s and you could have a nearly fast computer!
;^)


Lionel
lionel 4287 at verizon net