Jeffrey B. Layton wrote:
Also, there are users in classified environments who would love to get rid of as many disks as they can because of administrative as well as security issues.
We had proposed something like that about a year ago to a customer with those issues. Running nodes pure diskless, and doing the air-gap bit on the head node (simple power on/off was not acceptable, there was an explicit "air-gap" requirement on the power cord and wall socket).
It seems that some other vendor has productized this as well. Generally it is fairly simple to do (Tiburon has support for this, as does Perceus/WW, and others ... ).
The diffentiation then is management. I'm not convinced that it will be easier to install and manage a cluster with (say) 1 to 4 GB flash drives used as boot compared to using e.g. warewulf to manage boot images. Or that it will be faster. Or (really) cheaper -- $40 is still $40 more than a diskless system, and $40 that would buy it more real memory that is likely to ultimately be more valuable in terms of improved performance and stability.
Keeping the nodes as clean, simple, cheap as possible is a good thing. Cluttering them up with lots of unneeded things doesn't help much.
One area which does have a cross-over point is IPMI. After about 10-15 nodes, it starts getting less expensive to get a switched PDU and a console server. Gives you the same bios level access and power control. You do lose a little going without IPMI ... it does give you more scriptable management flexibility ... one of the nicer aspects is being able to force stateful installs (the disk based ones) to pxe boot on next boot, from a script.
IPMI cards cost $60-$120 depending upon what you need them to do (kvm over ip or not). Dell has DRAC cards, Sun's are integrated in, HPs and IBMs are extra, no idea on pricing. At 15 of thise, you are looking at $1800, which more than pays for the console server and switchable PDU.
Good point. I agree :) Now, about teaching you Fortran90....
F90? We are at F200x (x==3 or 4) already ... Sheesh! -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Founder and CEO Scalable Informatics LLC, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web : http://www.scalableinformatics.com http://jackrabbit.scalableinformatics.com phone: +1 734 786 8423 fax : +1 866 888 3112 cell : +1 734 612 4615 _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
