Hi Guys and girls, i wonder if you could help me, whilst seti has been down i have been looking at some of you guys who have dedicated computers to run seti, now im on a budget but i just got 3 of these off a well known auction site - ibm 306m eServer i know there not state of the art by any stretch but i wondered how could they would be , currently they only have 512mb of ram in them but when they arrive i will be upgrading it if needed, i just wondered what you all thought , also im sorry if this is in the wrong place - i thought there was a proper section for it but now i cant find it !

cheers

andy

The IBM 306M eServer will work like any other Pentium 4 or Pentium D machine. Since SETI only uses about 64MB of RAM per core/CPU, you shouldn't need more than the 512MB already installed.

excellent news :D more money to spend on the server rack - unless i decide to go blue peter style and build one. i still need to buy a network switch but they dont seem that expensive

Just stack them on a short file cabinet that will support the weight!

Please note your power bill before you fire them up... LOL

Have Fun...

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excellent news :D more money to spend on the server rack - unless i decide to go blue peter style and build one. i still need to buy a network switch but they dont seem that expensive

Go back to your favourite auction site and buy any old 10mb hub. Probably get one for $5. As you are only using it to run remote console and sharing the internet connection any ethernet connection will work.

As for a rack, I wouldn't bother. Get some stick on rubber feet to give some clearance between the units and stack em up in the corner.

Ian

excellent news :D more money to spend on the server rack - unless i decide to go blue peter style and build one. i still need to buy a network switch but they dont seem that expensive

Go back to your favourite auction site and buy any old 10mb hub. Probably get one for $5. As you are only using it to run remote console and sharing the internet connection any ethernet connection will work.

As for a rack, I wouldn't bother. Get some stick on rubber feet to give some clearance between the units and stack em up in the corner.

Ian

Forget the "hub", a 10/100 switch instead if not a 10/100/1000 switch.

Cheers.

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"Forget the "hub", a 10/100 switch instead if not a 10/100/1000 switch."

Running a gigabit switch wont increase his Seti throughput at all, compared to a stringing them together with a dumpster dived 10mbit hub.

Now if he was copying DVD or even CD images around the network, or running applications, then pay the $ and buy a gigabit switch. But for a ghetto BOINC setup, any old hub will work.

What I'm really saying is, get any cheap (or free) hub to string the machines together, and then take the cash you have saved and buy some sort of CUDA card. Then you get a useful boost.

Ian

thanks for the comments, i got two of the three servers up and running this morning (just in time as they both now have work) and so does my main pc - managed to pick up a 16 port 10/100 switch off said auction site for £8.25 pence delivered so when that arrives will bring the other server and other pc online - now as for a cuda card? will i be able to fit one in a 1u server or not ? im thinking probably not mind you this is the first time i have used 1u servers so i may be wrong

thanks

andy

Just stack them on a short file cabinet that will support the weight!

Please note your power bill before you fire them up... LOL

Have Fun...

well with two of them running and my home computer drawing 2.86 amps :D my concern wasnt the bill so much but was the lack of power sockets in the room there in ,



this was this morning on there first test run

Thats a sweet setup you got there! I remember my days when I had a half rack of my own... good ol' days...

What OS are you running? Are you going to host/run? anything on those servers?

BTW.. I've just notice you got the same monitor as me :) "Acer".

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Any program is only as good as it is useful.
-Linus Torvalds

Thats a sweet setup you got there! I remember my days when I had a half rack of my own... good ol' days...

What OS are you running? Are you going to host/run? anything on those servers?

BTW.. I've just notice you got the same monitor as me :) "Acer".

cheers for the reply, at the moment the servers are literally being used for seti and backing up a bit of stuff i cant afford to lose, i have copies of all the data stuck on the hard drive of each just in case, there all running windows xp which apart from the fact it wont network with my windows 7 pc's (4 in total) (havent even looked at why yet ) is good enough for the purpose- i love the acer monitors - got it when it was on offer and need to upgrade the middle one to a similar size but all in good time , keep finding other things to spend the money on lol

thanks for the comments, i got two of the three servers up and running this morning (just in time as they both now have work) and so does my main pc - managed to pick up a 16 port 10/100 switch off said auction site for £8.25 pence delivered so when that arrives will bring the other server and other pc online - now as for a cuda card? will i be able to fit one in a 1u server or not ? im thinking probably not mind you this is the first time i have used 1u servers so i may be wrong

thanks

andy

CUDA will be difficult. Servers are designed with very different priorities in mind. You can expect bad-ass networking (dual gigabit ports in your case), plus good hard disk access and reliable, large, memory: but graphics are usually at the bare minimum, puritanical, level - to allow technical administration only. You wouldn't choose a server as a games machine.

Looking at http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=MIGR-55255 and http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/xref/usxref-w.pdf (big PDF - you'll need to find your exact sub-model from the variants on pages 155-158), it looks like you'll be restricted to the original PCI expansion cards: although some variants have PCIexpress, watch out for that sneaky (low profile) against slot 2.

It is possible to get (a few) PCI CUDA cards, but low-profile PCIe is going to be a struggle. In either case, you'll be restricted to relatively low-power cards - and you should probably accept that restriction, otherwise heat dispersion is going to be a major problem - not to mention the limited (350 watt) power supply available.

Sorry I can't be more positive.

CUDA will be difficult. Servers are designed with very different priorities in mind. You can expect bad-ass networking (dual gigabit ports in your case), plus good hard disk access and reliable, large, memory: but graphics are usually at the bare minimum, puritanical, level - to allow technical administration only. You wouldn't choose a server as a games machine.

Looking at http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=MIGR-55255 and http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/xref/usxref-w.pdf (big PDF - you'll need to find your exact sub-model from the variants on pages 155-158), it looks like you'll be restricted to the original PCI expansion cards: although some variants have PCIexpress, watch out for that sneaky (low profile) against slot 2.

It is possible to get (a few) PCI CUDA cards, but low-profile PCIe is going to be a struggle. In either case, you'll be restricted to relatively low-power cards - and you should probably accept that restriction, otherwise heat dispersion is going to be a major problem - not to mention the limited (350 watt) power supply available.

Sorry I can't be more positive.

Thats no problem to be honest i thought that might be the case anyway - these will keep me going til funds allow me to carry out my original intention which was mini-itx cases x 6 and then i should have the option to expand to cuda - best get some overtime in (or win the lottery)

just ordered one of these up to see if it fits in ok, if not i have another use for it so £30 quid not a great loss

Asus GeForce 8400GS 512MB PCI-Express 2.0 x16 DVI Low Profile

Not sure what you paided for your servers. But with older tech like that it seems you could have built a lower end newer tech machine that would put out the same numbers and use less power over all. Especially after you buy multiple cases etc, to implement cuda cards etc. Same goes for the server industry now a days, instead of them running 5-6 servers with older tech that uses a lot of power, creates a lot of heat, and isn't as efficient overall they spend half the money all considered, buy 1 decent server and run VM's. Just something to think about. Back in the day, I had a P4 laptop, Pentium Machine, AMD 400+, and thought I was in hog heaven with my "farm". I now have a video card that crunches workunits faster than all 3 machines combined.

Just food for thought for people who stumble upon this later and are trying to decide it they want to by old servers etc. for crunching.

(Of course the geek in all of us like to have a mini-server room no matter how good or bad it is!)

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

i do see your point, i paid 40 quid each for the servers, and yep in hindsight they are not as good as i thought they might be on the other hand :D i like my toys and it will do til i get my hands on the setup i want :D

its late and im tired but by vm's do i take it you mean virtual machines? how do you do that its a new one on me ?

i do see your point, i paid 40 quid each for the servers, and yep in hindsight they are not as good as i thought they might be on the other hand :D i like my toys and it will do til i get my hands on the setup i want :D

its late and im tired but by vm's do i take it you mean virtual machines? how do you do that its a new one on me ?

Well 40 ea is not high at all, and not a bad purchase I don't think. Like I said geeks love toys no matter what they are, especially when it comes to servers.

You have two different types of Virtualization you have hardware level and software level. IE sun's virtualbox is software while VMWare EXSi and HyperV from Microsoft work on the hardware level.

A virtual machine is exactly that another computer sharing the same resources you have on hand. For instance when I decide to play around with linux I share one core (two now since I have a quad core now) and 1GB of ram to run a virtual machine. It's hard to explain in a forum exactly how it works, so I would suggest the finer articles Microsoft and VMWare going into detail what makes it possible. Obvious you have to have hardware that supports it, to be able to do it, and it's really nice to be able to setup a sandbox when you feel like seeing if something will break an OS ect.

In the server market there is huge draw on being able to buy 1 server that has awesome stats with insane amounts of ram etc running possibly a dual quad core xeon etc. Then you can run like 5-6 VM's pretty easily and only have to rent out one spot on the rack, power bill for one server etc. Also another advantage is that if a VM crashes it only brings down that one VM instead of the whole box etc.

Obviously this is a HIGHLY cut down version of VM's their advantages etc. There is just too much to cover. It's really getting momentum in the server world now and bleeding into the home market for specific applications. Go read up, be warned you will be playing with them before the next day. (I suggest a Friday afternoon)

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

2.86 amps is 696 watts @ 240v ... you won't need to turn up the heating anytime soon unless you shift Massive amounts of air to the outside world

;-)

Assume the power bill is paid by the Bank of Mum & Dad :-))

My advise FWIW is to ditch them (sorry for being blunt), get a few 2-3 year old new/end-of-line laptops with, say T57xx CPUs & 3gb RAM each etc which will also cope with other projects that require massive RAM.

By my research three such items will draw 150 watts tops, more like 120 watts average and need little active external cooling. Active local cooling will reduce the wear & tear on the laptops' internal fans BTW.

HTH, Ray

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The difference between 0 and 1 is greater than the difference between 1 and 1,000,000

thanks for the replies, i will look into the vm route as well when i have woken up a bit more for it all to make sense :D looking at what my main pc is crunching compared to the servers just with an oldish motherboard/cpu and a cheap gpu card its crunching a lot more than the servers are.... oh well an excuse to treat myself to some more new toys :P come on pay day lets spend some cash :D

2.86 amps is 696 watts @ 240v ... you won't need to turn up the heating anytime soon unless you shift Massive amounts of air to the outside world

;-)

Assume the power bill is paid by the Bank of Mum & Dad :-))

My advise FWIW is to ditch them (sorry for being blunt), get a few 2-3 year old new/end-of-line laptops with, say T57xx CPUs & 3gb RAM each etc which will also cope with other projects that require massive RAM.

By my research three such items will draw 150 watts tops, more like 120 watts average and need little active external cooling. Active local cooling will reduce the wear & tear on the laptops' internal fans BTW.

HTH, Ray

i wish the power bill was paid by bank of mum and dad sadly after all the years of sponging off them i now pay my own lol, and your right about the heating i had to open the window last night when i got in from work as its only a small room there in and i couldnt sit in there without sweating

You don't want to crunch seti in a VM. Not to mention I don't think the server you have are capable of messing with VM's.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!