Hello All,<br><br>Thank you for your detailed responses. Following your line of thought, advice and web links, it seems that it is not difficult to build a small cluster to get started. I explored the photos of the various clusters that have been posted and it seems quite straightforward. <br>
<br>It seems I have been siezed by a mad inspiration to do this...The line of thought is t make a 19 inch rack with aluminum plates on which the mother boards are mounted. <br><br>The plan is first to simply create one using the old computers i have...This can be an experimental one to get going...Thereafter it would make sense to research the right mother boards, cooling and so on...<br>
<br>It seems that I am going to take the plunge next week and wire these three computers on a home grown rack...<br><br>A simple question though...Aluminum plates are used because aluminum is does not conduct electricity. Is this correct?<br>
<br>Also for future reference, I saw a reference to dc-dc converters for power supply. Is it possible to use motherboards that do not guzzle electricity and generate a lot of heat and are yet powerful. It seems that not much more is needed that motherboards, CPUs, memory, harddrives and an ethernet card. For a low energy system, has any one explored ultra low energy consuming and heat generating power solutions that maybe use low wattage DC?<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 8:50 AM, Mark Hahn <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:hahn@mcmaster.ca">hahn@mcmaster.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
What is 1u?<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
rack-mounted hardware is measured in units called "units" ;)<br>
1U means 1 rack unit: roughly 19" wide and 1.75" high. racks are all<br>
the same width, and rackmount unit consumes some number of units in height.<br>
(rack depth is moderately variable.) (a full rack is generally 42").<br>
<br>
a 1U server is a basic cluster building block - pretty well suited,<br>
since it's not much taller than a disk, and fits a motherboard pretty nicely (clearance for dimms if designed properly, a couple optional cards, passive CPU heatsinks.)<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
What is a blade system?<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
it is a computer design that emphasizes an enclosure and fastening mechanism<br>
that firmly locks buyers into a particular vendor's high-margin line ;)<br>
<br>
in theory, the idea is to factor a traditional server into separate<br>
components, such as shared power supply, unified management, and often<br>
some semi-integrated network/san infrastructure. one of the main original<br>
selling points was power management: that a blade enclosure would have<br>
fewer, more fully loaded, more efficnet PSUs. and/or more reliable. blades are often claimed to have superior managability. both of these factors are very, very arguable, since it's now routine for 1U servers to have nearly the same PSU efficiency, for instance. and in reality, simple managability interfaces like IPMI are far better (scalably scriptable)<br>
than a too-smart gui per enclosure, especially if you have 100 enclosures...<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
goes into a good rack in terms of size and matieral (assuming it has to be<br>
insulated)<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
ignoring proprietary crap, MB sizes are quite standardized. and since 10 million random computer shops put them together, they're incredibly<br>
forgiving when it comes to mounting, etc. I'd recommend just glue-gunning<br>
stuff into place, and not worring too much.<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Anyone using clusters for animation on this list?<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
not much, I think. this list is mainly "using commodity clusters to do stuff fairly reminiscent of traditional scientific supercomputing".<br>
<br>
animation is, in HPC terms, embarassingly parallel and often quite<br>
IO-intensive. both those are somewhat derogatory. all you need to do<br>
an animation farm is some storage, a network, nodes and probably a scheduler or at least task queue-er.<br>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Best regards,<br>arjuna<br><a href="http://www.brahmaforces.com">http://www.brahmaforces.com</a><br>
<br />--
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