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Clusters at Home?
dallastgi asks: "Sitting at my desk (a bargain second hand, due to lack of drawers) I looked at the side and realized I could build a nice little cluster, on either side of it. It already has wooden rails for rack mounts, holes in the back (from previous cables for computers) for cooling, and several computers in the cupboard. I just needs a door, power and cooling ducts. What is the best possible way to power 6+ motherboards, with a minimal amount of power-points and heat dissipation? What is the best way to cool those CPU's in minimal space? I'm sure many others on Slashdot have thought about their own clusters, so what are your recommendations on how to go about this?"
*But seriously, under your desk is not the place where you want to put a cluster.*
if it's made from mini-itx's or similars.. why not?
could end up taking less thatn 600wats total anyways.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Inspired by the discussions on the Beowulf mailing list we built in March 2003 a Beowulf of bare motherboards. You can see it (with text in French) on this site
Everything is made of metal, using ready-made beams to which we attached the motherboards with integrated Broadcom NICs. The cluster (diskless, headless) has been running fine since then. We have one power supply per node in order to maximize cooling and avoid wiring errors if adding motherboard plugs to power supplies : design was made with CATIA V5R6, calculations were done by graduate students in engineering using Flo Therm, and they predicted the temperature inside the cluster within 1 degree C : 27 degrees at steady state for 19 ambient.
The only detail we had forgotten was to make buttons for power and reset, since they are only to be found in ready-made cases ; we lost hours to find the proper socket size on Radiospares.
The design took about 20 hours, the fabrication about one week, software installation (having to find the proper driver for the NICs for clustermatic, setting up PXE) two days, we saved maybe 30 % of the total cost (here about 4000 euros for 8 Athlon 2400 nodes with 1 Gb RAM), had a lot of fun and learning.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Never, ever, EVER put electronic parts anywhere in the general vicinity of wood - you're just asking for a conflagration if you do.
The temperature that wood burns at: roughly 450 degress F.
When is the last time you've seen a properly maintained computer system burst into flames?
I've seen chips burn, plastic melt, but I've never seen a system that was cleared of dust burst into flames. If you keep your computer in a shop full of wood chips and oil, then I could see a problem...
Computer systems tend not to have a lot of items inside that can sustain a fire. You can test this for yourself -- find a lighter and some old computers: try to create a sustained fire. Be careful of dripping plastic, it'll burn you.
I would be more worried about cheap (faulty) electronics in the home -- clock radios where you missed the recall, old VCRs, etc. That probably isn't as much of a risk as faulty home wiring and mice though.
As for a shelf full of electronic equipment, I've heard of people using mineral oil in transformers, which is flammable. Transformers, regardless of the oil, will fail in spectacular, much-spark inducing ways if they ever develop a leak. UPSs with improper batteries or circuits may also be fire hazards -- APC replaced my little UPS a year ago because of a faulty circuit. I've seen monitors fail in interesting ways, and they tend to be filled with dust. I've never seen one catch on fire, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do. I tend to turn mine off when I'm not in the room.
Considering how many computers are out there on wooden desks, and how many televisions, radios, vcrs, TVs, etc are on wooden entertainment centers, if the average piece of electronics equipment presented a fire hazard, homes would be burning down left and right.