Commonality of hardware is what your going for, and to try and use software to make up for it results in more work for you/the admin.
Having a base hardware profile for your "workstations" is important , and if you can have hardware commonality between your workstations, and servers, all the better. Your generic pc's can be whatever...
If your pushing your work stations hard, your on a 2 year (or less) upgrade cycle, so unless you overplan, and building expandability, your gonna be spending an average of 2-5k per upgrade cycle, per machine.
As a straw man (since these are my keystrokes), I would pick a server/ws vendor who had the fewest common SKUs for their machines. My fav so far is introtrend/uniwide. They have this clever little daughterboard that sits ontop of the main board that allows an additional 2 CPU sockets, and an additional 16 dimms to be added. You can run the 4 CPU boxes in a 2 cpu mode, with a little bit of fiddling. The advantage is that you can get a bunch of 2x core 8000 opterons cheep of of ebay, and then as the users wine for more power (a year down the road), swap them out for 4x core, or double them up, placeing 4x CPU in each box. Because this is running one generation behind, your gonna save some coin. You get 2 16x slots, that can fit double wide vid cards, not to shabby.
You stock the same spares for your work station, as your servers. If you have to run win7 , then you can only use 2 physical CPU's, (but all 32 memory slots), or of you install 2007r2 you can hit all 4.
Vid cards are another matter, if you have "performance issues" , then your gonna have to get set to play musical drivers, its a fact of life. You can limit the family and supported chipsets (nvidia) for the ones you buy, but only if you get the backing of the people who hold the purse strings.
If you explain to $ holders, that you can save the cost of 3 or 4 computer purchases over the equipment lifetime, and that the upgrades will be "low cost", just getting additional memory and CPU, vs a whole new machine.
You can also let them know that you can keep one spare motherboard around, and fix your servers, or a workstation.
I happen to have 5 of these boxes (the 940 sockets) at home, and should be setting up a few more as they get retired from datacenters, Photoshop rocks with 60gb of memory.
In one place that followed this plan, these machines are in front line use, after 5 years. They started off as 2x cpu's, went to 4x cpu's, the vid cards got SLIsed, than put into slower boxes as better vid cards came out, and then into the servers.
You can do this with any high end bit of kit, just set standards, and follow them, high end server and workstation boards tend to have a multiyear life, the mid end commodity pc's tend to last a year before they fade away . The Tyan n6650W was out in 2008, and should be around for a few more years. http://www.overclock.net/amd-build-logs/357378-dual-quad-opty-sli-build-tyan.html
If you are unable to set standards and follow them, your kinda screwed anyway.
If your just looking for longer run time, you can take a look into larger battery packs.
If your into doing things cheap, use a surplus APC 3000 chassis in the manner as i've done at home. 4x 120ah 12v batteries, or for longer run times 8 6v golf cart batteries. Each setup is good to run 15 amps for a while.
So for less than 1k installed , NEXT to the machine room, not in it (unless you want to pay for cooling things that are fine at 80 deg f) you have lots of low cost power, just replace the battery every few years.
Test by running the system down to %80, then kicking in a gen set and charging to %100, then switch over to "normal" power. Monthly.
If you include a 30 amp (continuous) rated gen set per UPS you should be able to extend your run time. Your gen set should put out the maximum that your UPS can, and what it takes to charge your batteries, plus about %35 for overhead, safety and longevity.
A good way to size the UPS is to use the name plate amperage to limit the machines that connect to it. Its an easy way to convince nontechnical people, to give you the headroom you want.
Or you can do what I recommend large data centers do, buy used gen sets in bulk, and have 2N for what you think you should have...
I like going to the ship breakers and getting the 60hz sets (or 50hz convertible to 60) from them. Depending on the stock levels, you can get quite a nice price on a few in bulk, then have them refurbished to Lloyd of London specs (or better), and shipped.
At 2N, who cares if you drop a few a year, you can power your whole campus during an outage, or peak shave and reduce your power bill. It might even be cost effective to get more, than to rebuild.
Playtimes over I got a job to do,
and the world will be less crowded by the time I'm through,
and I'll keep rolling while bullets fly,
cause all my shootings be drivebys.
-mchawking
popup.lala.com/popup/360569496731547024 (mp3)
www.mchawking.com/includes/lyrics/driveby_lyrics.php (WORDs)
at first i thought the title said,
"EFF Launches Surveillance Self-Defense Satellite",
and i said, Cool those little bastards are gonna get whats coming to them.
but no, it is a "Self-Defense Site", ok i can deal with that,
its nice to know that the contributions that i have made over
the years are going for rail gun rights. now i can look
froward to a nice Phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range.
hmmm.... nope, nothing like that there....
and i did not find any mention of putting any of the people
who allowed the data breach, did the breaching, or profited
by the act,into a game of "tay-zer tag"
( http://a.parsons.edu/~randy/tag/ )
what kind of lame "Self-Defense Site" is this?
Re:They're not the first ...
on
The Google Navy
·
· Score: 1
Google will have some of the same issues as that "other startup", and lots that are different. A floating oil platform (to me) works better than a ship based datacenter.
Here is a letter that I sent to one of the VARS for the "other startup", strangely enough, I never got an answer back. Perhaps it just got spam filtered out.
The questions remain unanswered....
*********** Mon Feb 4 11:23:17 2008 Received: from [****************.yahoo.com via HTTP; Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:23:17 PST Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 11:23:17 -0800 (PST) ********************** Subject: Floating Data Centers?!? To: ken@teamsilverback.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Length: 8789
I saw your article about floating datacenters, and since you asked for input, I thought I would chime in. Let me start off by saying I like the idea, I know that there is great room for delivering a good product, at a good price point.
Now before I put my racks in a floating data center, here are some of my concerns and references to real world issues. (I have a lot more, but that depends on the ship and configuration.),
1) ""using sea water for their chill water"". Having seawater around is a good heat sink, and since the ships are at dock most of the time, a long pipe can be run to the cooler water zones to draw in water that is close to freezing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_lake_water_cooling Using colder sea water (after a standard air heat exchanger) can result in good economies, if the heat exchangers can stand up to the corrosive environment.
2) ""All generators will have access to the ships fuel storage during disaster scenarios, which allows them to operate for nearly a month without the need to refuel.""
Traditional fuel for gen sets and large ship engines are very different. An onboard gen set is like a modern rail road locomotive engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:3000hp_curve_ver2.jpg ), and it runs on diesel, a main power plant for a ship (also a diesel) traditionally runs on Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO). Without modifications to either the main power plant, or the gen sets, both engines can not share the same fuel source. Please note the differences between #2 (the traditional fuel for ship board gen sets) , and #6 (Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO), AKA Bunker C, the traditional fuel for ships manufactured in the 1980's). #6 is almost a jelly at cold temperatures, and must be heated (to around 100c ) for efficient movement, and burning. The main engine on a large cargo vessel is also much more efficient (up to %50) in its use of fuel, making them more economical than the smaller generators. Gen sets use a small amount of diesel per day, (compared to the main engine) a 3100 kw gen set will use 4253 gallons of fuel per day (http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/living_and_working/diaries/rrs_james
Slashdot Mirror
Commonality of hardware is what your going for, and to try
and use software to make up for it results in more work for you/the admin.
Having a base hardware profile for your "workstations" is important , and if you can have hardware commonality between your workstations, and servers, all the better. Your generic pc's can be whatever...
If your pushing your work stations hard, your on a 2 year (or less) upgrade cycle, so unless you overplan, and building expandability, your gonna be spending an average of 2-5k per upgrade cycle, per machine.
As a straw man (since these are my keystrokes), I would pick a server/ws vendor who had the fewest common SKUs for their machines. My fav so far is introtrend/uniwide. They have this clever little daughterboard that sits ontop of the main board that allows an additional 2 CPU sockets, and an additional 16 dimms to be added. You can run the 4 CPU boxes in a 2 cpu mode, with a little bit of fiddling. The advantage is that you can get a bunch of 2x core 8000 opterons cheep of of ebay, and then as the users wine for more power (a year down the road), swap them out for 4x core, or double them up, placeing 4x CPU in each box. Because this is running one generation behind, your gonna save some coin. You get 2 16x slots, that can fit double wide vid cards, not to shabby.
You stock the same spares for your work station, as your servers. If you have to run win7 , then you can only use 2 physical CPU's, (but all 32 memory slots), or of you install 2007r2 you can hit all 4.
Vid cards are another matter, if you have "performance issues" , then your gonna have to get set to play musical drivers, its a fact of life. You can limit the family and supported chipsets (nvidia) for the ones you buy, but only if you get the backing of the people who hold the purse strings.
If you explain to $ holders, that you can save the cost of 3 or 4 computer purchases over the equipment lifetime, and that the upgrades will be "low cost", just getting additional memory and CPU, vs a whole new machine.
You can also let them know that you can keep one spare motherboard around, and fix your servers, or a workstation.
I happen to have 5 of these boxes (the 940 sockets) at home, and should be setting up a few more as they get retired from datacenters, Photoshop rocks with 60gb of memory.
In one place that followed this plan, these machines are in front line use, after 5 years. They started off as 2x cpu's, went to 4x cpu's, the vid cards got SLIsed, than put into slower boxes as better vid cards came out, and then into the servers.
You can do this with any high end bit of kit, just set standards, and follow them, high end server and workstation boards tend to have a multiyear life, the mid end commodity pc's tend to last a year before they fade away . The Tyan n6650W was out in 2008, and should be around for a few more years.
http://www.overclock.net/amd-build-logs/357378-dual-quad-opty-sli-build-tyan.html
If you are unable to set standards and follow them, your kinda screwed anyway.
If your just looking for longer run time, you can take a look
into larger battery packs.
If your into doing things cheap, use a surplus APC 3000 chassis in the
manner as i've done at home. 4x 120ah 12v batteries, or for longer run times
8 6v golf cart batteries. Each setup is good to run 15 amps for a while.
So for less than 1k installed , NEXT to the machine room, not in it
(unless you want to pay for cooling things that are fine at 80 deg f)
you have lots of low cost power, just replace the battery every few years.
Test by running the system down to %80, then kicking in a gen set and
charging to %100, then switch over to "normal" power. Monthly.
If you include a 30 amp (continuous) rated gen set per UPS you should be
able to extend your run time. Your gen set should put out the maximum that
your UPS can, and what it takes to charge your batteries, plus about
%35 for overhead, safety and longevity.
A good way to size the UPS is to use the name plate amperage to limit the
machines that connect to it. Its an easy way to convince nontechnical people,
to give you the headroom you want.
Or you can do what I recommend large data centers do, buy used gen sets in bulk,
and have 2N for what you think you should have...
I like going to the ship breakers and getting the 60hz sets (or 50hz
convertible to 60) from them. Depending on the stock levels, you
can get quite a nice price on a few in bulk, then have them refurbished
to Lloyd of London specs (or better), and shipped.
At 2N, who cares if you drop a few a year, you can power your
whole campus during an outage, or peak shave and reduce your
power bill. It might even be cost effective to get more, than to rebuild.
Be careful what you order, and how its done, you could end up with a
bunch of miss matched parts, (no common spares) or the wrong thing,
or to big of a gen set... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D24EMlA8Bzc
when you wanted this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYKoaS7bEuI&feature=related
oohh look, my fav , and its ebay... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180459158144&rvr_id=&crlp=1_263602_263622&UA=WVF%3F&GUID=022207c11230a040b1c48554ffdfcdaf&itemid=180459158144&ff4=263602_263622
look its a 6 pack of used gen sets... air start, and natural gas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQwaVwj8I7w&feature=related
or if you can find one of these, (or kludge something like this together)
http://www.pickuptrucks.com/html/news/ram_contractor.html
you can drive your gen set to work.
Playtimes over I got a job to do, and the world will be less crowded by the time I'm through, and I'll keep rolling while bullets fly, cause all my shootings be drivebys. -mchawking popup.lala.com/popup/360569496731547024 (mp3) www.mchawking.com/includes/lyrics/driveby_lyrics.php (WORDs)
at first i thought the title said, "EFF Launches Surveillance Self-Defense Satellite", and i said, Cool those little bastards are gonna get whats coming to them. but no, it is a "Self-Defense Site", ok i can deal with that, its nice to know that the contributions that i have made over the years are going for rail gun rights. now i can look froward to a nice Phased-plasma rifle in the forty watt range. hmmm.... nope, nothing like that there.... and i did not find any mention of putting any of the people who allowed the data breach, did the breaching, or profited by the act ,into a game of "tay-zer tag"
( http://a.parsons.edu/~randy/tag/ )
what kind of lame "Self-Defense Site" is this?
Google will have some of the same issues as that "other startup",
and lots that are different. A floating oil platform
(to me) works better than a ship based datacenter.
_IF_ Google was to do a floating datacenter, I'd love to see
them take one of the old nuke flat-tops, and use that...
The big E as a datacenter would be killer, better than a pile of scrap.
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003578.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)
http://www.nvr.navy.mil/nvrships/details/CV64.htm
EACH of the A2W power plants can deliver over 26,000 kw
(over 200,000 kw total) , and if you combine the reactor
hot water output, with an amonia based cooling system,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator
http://www.nh3tech.org/absorption.html
can give low cost cooling.
Here is a letter that I sent to one of the VARS for the "other startup",
strangely enough, I never got an answer back. Perhaps it just got spam filtered out.
The questions remain unanswered....
*********** Mon Feb 4 11:23:17 2008
Received: from [****************.yahoo.com via HTTP; Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:23:17 PST
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 11:23:17 -0800 (PST)
**********************
Subject: Floating Data Centers?!?
To: ken@teamsilverback.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Length: 8789
I saw your article about floating datacenters, and since you asked for
input, I thought I would chime in. Let me start off by saying I like the idea,
I know that there is great room for delivering a good product, at a good price point.
Now before I put my racks in a floating data center, here are some of my
concerns and references to real world issues. (I have a lot more, but
that depends on the ship and configuration.),
1) ""using sea water for their chill water"". Having seawater around is
a good heat sink, and since the ships are at dock most of the time, a long
pipe can be run to the cooler water zones to draw in water that is
close to freezing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_lake_water_cooling
Using colder sea water (after a standard air heat exchanger) can result in
good economies, if the heat exchangers can stand up to the corrosive environment.
2) ""All generators will have access to the ships fuel storage during disaster scenarios, which
allows them to operate for nearly a month without the need to refuel.""
Traditional fuel for gen sets and large ship engines are very different. An
onboard gen set is like a modern rail road locomotive engine
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:3000hp_curve_ver2.jpg ), and it runs on diesel,
a main power plant for a ship (also a diesel) traditionally runs on Heavy Fuel Oil
(HFO). Without modifications to either the main power plant, or the gen sets, both
engines can not share the same fuel source. Please note the differences between #2
(the traditional fuel for ship board gen sets) , and #6 (Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO), AKA
Bunker C, the traditional fuel for ships manufactured in the 1980's). #6 is almost
a jelly at cold temperatures, and must be heated (to around 100c ) for efficient
movement, and burning. The main engine on a large cargo vessel is also much more
efficient (up to %50) in its use of fuel, making them more economical than the
smaller generators. Gen sets use a small amount of diesel per day, (compared
to the main engine) a 3100 kw gen set will use 4253 gallons of fuel per day
(http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/living_and_working/diaries/rrs_james