On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 15:18 -0700, Glen Otero wrote: > Greetings biocluster intelligentsia! > > I have some new BioBrew (biobrew.org) feature ideas that I'd like to > scrutinize against the collective intelligence and experience of this > community. I've written a few information gathering questions that, > if answered, ought to help me judge the feasibility of my ideas. > What's in it for those of you who take a few minutes to respond? > Well, the first 20 folks to email me (offline at > gotero at linuxprophet.com) with sufficient answers to *all* 20 > questions will receive a $10 ThinkGeek gift certificate. The next 10 > people with answers to all the questions will receive a $5 ThinkGeek > gift certificate. The questions are below with example answers in > parentheses (sometimes). Be as detailed as you like, because more > detailed answers will win in the event of a tie breaker : ) > > Thanks for your help!!-- Glen > > 1) What is the size of your Linux cluster? (e.g. 128 nodes) 4 nodes > 2) What is the compute node architecture? (e.g. dual 3GHz Xeon, dual > Opteron) Dual PowerPC > 3) Do your compute nodes have local hard drives or are they diskless? They have hard drives, but boot over the network > 4) What is the cluster interconnect? (e.g. GigE) GigE > 5) What application(s) primarily run on your cluster (e.g. BLAST, HMMER) BLAST, Migrate, graph analysis, homegrown stuff > 6) If BLAST is running on your cluster, describe the type of BLAST > jobs (e.g. blastn- genome vs. genome, blastn-genome annotation with > ESTs) genome vs. genome > 7) What type of cluster filesystem is in use on your cluster? (e.g. > NFS, GFS, proprietary) NFS > 8) If you use NFS, is your NFS server the same as the cluster head > node or is it a separate server? Separate server > 9) If you use NFS, what type of machine is your NFS server? (e.g. > dual Xeon Linux Box w/ x number of yGB hard drives) Sun v20 Dual Opteron dual 2x73G SCSI > 10) What is the ratio of NFS servers to compute nodes in your cluster? 1:4 > 11) How do you benchmark the throughput of your NFS server, i.e. what > application(s) do you use to stress the NFS server and what tool(s) > do you use to measure throughput? I don't, my node count is small enough to not be a problem > 12) If you have a NAS/SAN, what type of machine(s) are they? (e.g. > NetApp w/ x number of yGB hard drives) None > 13) What is the ratio of NAS servers to compute nodes in your cluster? 0:4 > 14) What is the throughput of your NAS server(s)/SAN? NA > 15) How do you benchmark the throughput of your NAS server/SAN, i.e. > what application(s) do you use to stress the servers and what tool(s) > do you use to measure throughput? NA > 16) Are you satisfied overall with your cluster filesystem solution? No but it gets the work done right now > 17) What are the two biggest problems you have with your cluster > filesystem solution? Speed and reliability > 18) With regard to cluster filesystems, what would you do differently > when building your next cluster? (e.g. increase NFS servers/compute > node ratio, different filesystem) GFS looks nice, but I haven't spent much time on it yet. > 19) What NFS server/compute node or NAS-SAN/compute node ratio will > you aim for with the next cluster you build or upgrade? Haven't thought about it yet. > 20) If necessary, do you mind if Glen emails you offli > ne to seek > clarification on some of your answers? (Answering "Yes" is not > necessary to be eligible for a gift certificate). Sure > _______________________________________________ > Bioclusters maillist - Bioclusters at bioinformatics.org > https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters >