Dr D.S-M. Huen wrote: > On Feb 28 2005, Matthew Hudson wrote: > >> >> Another key consideration is: How much sysadmin experience / effort >> does this life science group have? Maintaining and updating a Linux >> cluster built from scratch can be a challenge for a group of biology >> PhDs with no full-time sysadmin, not to mention the cost of power >> consumtion, cooling etc.. Sun is a little better than building your >> own Linux system, Apple really try to make this easier and might be a >> better solution, but their cluster software is expensive. If it's >> just an EST project you might recommend they get one or two good size >> SMP machines (maybe the new quad Opterons from Sun, with at least 8GB >> RAM) and forget about the cluster. >> > > I must admit I am considering whether I should aim to use something > like Sun's Compute Grid service in future ($1/ CPU-hr). The overhead > of sysadmin plus the need to find secure space for machines in a > crowded lab is not one to be relished. Lab space is incredibly > expensive too, not only to build and maintain but also because the > space occupied by machines is space that could otherwise house one or > more grant-generating postdocs :-) > Perhaps you need one of these: http://www.orionmulti.com/ Apparently they sell a version with bioinformatics apps like Bioteam's iNquiry pre-installed. I've been dreaming of having 96 processors under my desk ever since I heard about them. -Aaron