Ed
10/2/2002: Ed retired after 1.5 years of service. All 96 working and non-working DS10s removed from Ed.
Our second LinuxBIOS/BProc cluster is a 128 node Alpha cluster comprised of 104 single processor Compaq DS10s, 16 dual processor API networks CS20s, and 8 four processor SMP Compaq ES40s.
10/2/2002
Ed retired! All 96 DS10s and Myrinet hardware removed from Ed. The remainder of the cluster is set up as a simple 10/100 Ethernet connected cluster for 64-bit development.
In celebration of Ed's 1.5 years of service (and also as an excuse to see Erik's new house), we had a retirement party for Ed.
We brought along one of the dead nodes for fun.
Sung made fresh pasta and Matt made his family's secret sauce...
...while the rest gathered around to enjoy the company.
Amanda (Minnich) baked a delicious cake for dessert.
Even the dogs managed to put aside their differences for the evening and shared the rug.
We finished the evening off with a talk by Ron and a retrospective slide show set to This is the Time by Billy Joel.
10/2/2002
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Due to the previous day's firedrill, it was decided that we should remove three racks of DS10s — 96 total nodes (not all working). The Myrinet cards were also removed from all 96 nodes. The nodes will be shipped to Sandia California to live out the rest of their lives as part of their LinuxBIOS cluster. The Myrinet cards will be used in pinkish.
10/1/2002
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A couple more DS10s overheat and cause a burning smell that concerns our staff. After consulting the fire department, it is decided to pull the fire alarm and bring in the troops. It turns out that the heatsinks got so hot it burnt the paint off.
4/25/2002
Quadrics is returned to Myricom for in-trade.
4/22/2002
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4/15/2002
Once the Myrinet hardware arrived, we needed to remove the Quadrics stuff. The bulk of the work was in removing the cabling. Erik commanded the operation with his troop of three minions. These four brave young men set forth on a journey they will not soon forget.
Our minions began the day bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to perform any task that was uttered by their fearless leader.
Andrey, ...
... Paul, ...
...and Pump pulled cables while Erik took pictures and yelled out commands.
It took a tug o' war, ...
...but we finally got all the cables out.
Due to the fire hazard, we had to move it next door (which required a small bit of untangling).
...
...
We finally packed the boxes of cables. Pump was pooped and nearly got sealed in the box and shipped off to Myricom.
Before shipping it off, we took a few goofy pictures for scale. Erik is 5' 10".
Sung is 5' 1".
3/20/2002
The purchase order for the Quadrics/Myrinet2000 trade-in faxed to Myricom.
1/15/2002
- We still cannot get working Linux drivers for Elan 3 under bproc. As far as we can tell you must be running the Quadrics RMS scheduler for even IP to work, and bproc and RMS are fundamentally incompatible. Also, much of the software we need to work with is not Open Source, which makes it difficult for us to test new ideas. That being the case, we have received a quote from Myricom for a trade-in for Myrinet 2000. The quote is currently being approved for purchase.
- The information to get LinuxBIOS working on the ES40s, so that the fontend and 5 compute nodes could run LinuxBIOS, was never forthcoming from Compaq.
- Charlie Strauss (from LANL's Biology division) has been running his CPU-intensive protein folding codes on Ed continuously since about day one.
7/1/2001
Affectionately named Ed, the current cluster is comprised of the following:
- 104 DS10's booting Linux out of flash — yes, the SRM is gone!
- ES-40 front end, running BProc (but not LinuxBIOS, yet).
- No Quadrics support, yet. Quadrics is working with us on this and we hope to have it soon.
5/8/2001
- 104 DS10 nodes with Quadrics interface delivered
- No switches
- Power in machine room not ready
- Minion sacrifice
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Notice no CD ROM drive, no floppy drive.
