[Scotttheking]

So you've just received the most wonderful gift. You can get all the computer equipment of your choice for a DC farm, within these limitations:
You must have space for it.
You must have the power for it.
You can't put it in parents / brothers / sisters rooms, and in other living areas if you aren't the head of the household.
You can't buy any space or add power capacity for what you buy.

List what you'd get. It can be parts (I always love parts lists), it can be OEM machines, whatever. Don't forget your space and power requirements. You can't add 10 dual opteron systems and expect to run it on a 15 amp circuit, and probably not on a 20 either.

My list is pending

The beginnings of my list:
Chassis: Tyan Transport GX28 B2882T1S $1059
the description says it best, although I chose it because it's a nice 1U setup and it has the mobo I want.

The Transport GX28 bare-bone is to provide industry leading feature and performance for 2-way server systems in 1-U rack form factor. Using TYAN's dual AMD Opteron™_ based S2880 server board, the Transport GX28 features high compute power, low memory latency and optimal I/O bandwidth characterized by AMD's 64-bit processor and HyperTransport™ technology. In addition, with the support of four hot-swappable Ultra 320 SCSI hard disk drives and dual gigabit Ethernet ports in 1-U chassis form factor, the Transport GX28 implements unmatched feature set for demanding business applications.

Processors: 2X Opteron 248 $979ea
Ram: 4X 512MB PC3200 Reg ECC $166ea
HD: Netboot, either off the NIC or using a flash drive. One machine will get a Hitachi 73GB drive @ $316

I'm going to assume the systems use around 200 watts of power, but I'll research it further. That gives me 10 systems on a 20 amp line, and 7 on a 15 amp line.
Whatever switch I end up with probably will not be drawing over 50 watts of power.

So, that puts me at 27 systems on 2 20 amp circuits and 1 15 amp circuit. One of those will be the netboot server.
In another location, I get 4 on one line and 5 on another (for now, gotta check how much power the copier actually draws).
I still have some more space, just have to figure out how many circuits I actually have.
For now though, that's 36 dual 2.2GHz opterons

[billybob128]

would love the extra few gigahertz running for me but its powering the system to acctually work that is the problem
when i go to uni in two years and live in a flat/house ill try to get some goin on like solar panels but untill then its just too expensive eectric wise

[iMacfan]

I know absolutely nothing about setting up farms, but I'd personally like a mini version of the Virginia cluster, so that all the resources could be used as one unit for certain purposes.

David

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
So you've just received the most wonderful gift. You can get all the computer equipment of your choice for a DC farm, within these limitations:
You must have space for it.
You must have the power for it.
You can't put it in parents / brothers / sisters rooms, and in other living areas if you aren't the head of the household.
You can't buy any space or add power capacity for what you buy.

List what you'd get. It can be parts (I always love parts lists), it can be OEM machines, whatever. Don't forget your space and power requirements. You can't add 10 dual opteron systems and expect to run it on a 15 amp circuit, and probably not on a 20 either.

My list is pending

I would build all of mine from scratch, and in 4U rackmount units. That way I could put them all in one location, probably the basement because it is the coolest part of the house and has the most unused power capacity.


To start:

Thunder K7X Pro (S2469UGN) (Rackmount Only)
• Supports two AMD Athlon MP processors
• AGP Pro110 slot; supports 4x/2x modes
• Two 64-bit 66MHz and three 32-bit 33MHz PCI slots
• Integrated Gigabit Ethernet
• Optional Ultra 320 SCSI Controller

2 Per Board - Athlon MP2800 or MP3000 (when available, soon) - $199 each

2GB (4-512 MB Registered ECC PC2100 DIMMS) per system - Kingston - $85 each

1GeForce FX5200 per system - $85 each

2 Per System - Cheetah 15000 RPM 73GB - ST373453LC - Ultra 320 SCSI - $500 each

Antec 4U22 Rack mount Case Black w/ Front USB 2.0 Model 4U22ATX400. $150

Windows 2003 Server OS - $795
KVM Switch - $100
and a Rack of course, Rack Cabinet 42U Height - $1300

[mikkyo]

<h1>My Ideal Farm</h1>
<table>
<tr><td><img src="http://www.apple.com/pr/images/ref_03xserve_rack.jpg"></td><td><img src="http://www.apple.com/pr/images/ref_03xserve_rack.jpg"></td><td><img src="http://www.apple.com/pr/images/ref_03xserve_rack.jpg"></td></tr></table>

[reader50]

mikkyo, do you really need all the Xserve RAID storage? Nixing those would give room for 12 more Xserves per rack - twice as much crunching power.

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by mikkyo:
<h1>My Ideal Farm</h1>

When Apple releases the G5 based servers, I would definitely agree! The G4 based ones just cannot keep up with AMD or Intel for crunching, except maybe on RC5.

[mikkyo]

Yes, I need all those RAIDs to have enough storage for all the online porn movies that I make millions of dollars a year off so called "live streaming".





Actually, there wasn't a large picture of a rack with all XServes in it, so I just used what I found. I wouldn't even need a single XRAID.
Just gobs of RAM.

[OneMacGuy]

Originally posted by mikkyo:
Yes, I need all those RAIDs to have enough storage for all the online porn movies that I make millions of dollars a year off so called "live streaming".

Actually, there wasn't a large picture of a rack with all XServes in it, so I just used what I found. I wouldn't even need a single XRAID.
Just gobs of RAM.

Probably need a power upgrade to run that many boxes, and almost certainly need an AC upgrade to cool them. It WOULD be VERY impressive to show company when they came over, wouldn't it? Can you imagine having a rack full of Dual G5s?