Great news, Slavac. Kitties have been doing their dangdest to stay on Seti lately with the server ups and downs. I wanna see big things happening.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

New servers are built and on their way to SETI. I'll be following up with tracking information on them tomorrow.

PS a big thanks goes out to Phil who took a day off from work to put these things together alongside NKOL which saved us considerably on labor costs.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=67111#1201102 to see the pictures and read the story.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Hello Everyone,

I've had two cashiers checks drawn up today for the project. They are:

1. Total shipping from NKOL to SETI at Home for both servers. NKOL http://www.nkol.net went out of their way for us again by shipping these servers at a large discount. You can view this payment and its tracking information (once I mail the check tomorrow) by visiting http://www.gpuug.org/purchases

2. February direct to SETI paypal payments funds. You can view this payment per usual by visiting http://www.gpuug.org/content/payment-2012-03-05-seti-home

Lastly both servers should arrive at SETI at Home on Thursday of this week. To track the progress of the servers as they wind their way through UPS please visit http://www.gpuug.org/purchases

That's all I have for now guys, thanks!

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Hey guys:

I got an email from Matt earlier this morning which said simply:

Hey Brad - the servers are here, boxes opened, and everything looks good. Haven't plugged them in yet.

Exciting!!!

- Matt

What I found interesting was, I got this email before UPS could even update the tracking to show that the servers had been delivered. Someone had an eagle eye on the loading dock.

____________________________

Matt posted a Tech News update detailing the new server delivery. You can read about it here: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=67190

He also posted a picture of the JBOD, PaddyM and GeorgeM all sitting together on the work table ready to be implemented.


(Photo credit Matt Lebofsky)

Additionally both Matt and Jeff have promised to keep everyone informed as to the installation process of all of the hardware our GPU Users Group donors have purchased for SETI at Home. When I asked Jeff yesterday what the schedule for implementation was, he mentioned:

The one that will be a head to the jbod you folks gave us is definitely first up.

I'd imagine starting next week they will start the no doubt lengthy process of making space, testing, reconfiguring, installing software, and so on and so forth that's required in such a large undertaking. Please keep this in mind and have a bit of patience with the staff as they get everything installed.

___________________________

Lastly I think we're narrowing down a few new projects to work on for SETI at Home. As soon as I hear something back from the SETI guys in regards to new projects for the GPU Users Group, I'll let everyone know.

Thanks guys. I hope our donors take pride in seeing the fruits of their labor per-implementation in the SETI labs.

Brad

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

nice ! good news.

(now, i just need to search what a JBOD is , and what its purpose ^^)

Just a Bunch Of Disks. ;)

Cheers.

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nice ! good news.

(now, i just need to search what a JBOD is , and what its purpose ^^)

Just a Bunch Of Drives (JBOD). It will hold the science DB once Matt et al move that over and a few other items (it's big enough to do more than just the science DB). I'm sure the guys will fill us in on what all it's doing once they get the components installed.

To read more about the JBOD see http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=66635 and http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=66044&nowrap=true#1179009

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Sounds good. While we would all probably like them to have dedicated server monkeys to install and maintain things for them, they don't. Taking the time needed to get everything mounted, setup, and configured is defiantly worth the effort. I did that with another batch of hand me down servers from our IS department at work recently.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

I was wondering what JBOD meant too.

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Pluto will always be a planet to me.

Seti Ambassador
Not to late to order an Anni Shirt

I like keeping my fellow crunchers informed. Here's a bit of an email exchange between Jeff and I in regards to my question, "Will the new Intel server be up to the task of running both NPTCKR and AP backend at the same time?"

The intel server will be well up to that task for not only running the ntpckr and its companion, rfi,
but the AP backend analysis as well. And this machine is really needed.

I mentioned I'd personally like to see NPTCKR and RFI up and running more often, he replied with:

BTW, the ntpckr/rfi actually has been running of and on (mostly on, but currently off) for a while now
(on synergy). We are running test cases. This does not show up on the server status page. We should
probably configure things so that it does.

Thought you guys and girls might like to know the above. More on the status of the server implementation as I hear it. Matt should also be updating the Tech News section with progress updates on the aforementioned.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Hi Slavac

WTG ... and again thanks so much Slavac for all your hard work,

it is much appreciated!

and thanks to all who contributed money and thanks to GPU Users Group,

That is great news. From looking at the Server Status page it did look as though they had put the NPTCKR on a back burner somewhere and had forgotten about it.

I'm glad to know that isn't true.

Thanks for keeping us up on things.

Matt's update for yesterday (Monday)

I'm about to run out the door, but just FYI we did start turning these machines on today, and I finally got the JBOD wired internally to our liking - and we're seeing all the drives etc. via the external SATA. Looking good! I'll post a more thorough update once we get these in the closet, OS's installed, etc.

I think they're having fun with the new shiny.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Matt's update for yesterday (Monday)

I'm about to run out the door, but just FYI we did start turning these machines on today, and I finally got the JBOD wired internally to our liking - and we're seeing all the drives etc. via the external SATA. Looking good! I'll post a more thorough update once we get these in the closet, OS's installed, etc.

I think they're having fun with the new shiny.

:-)

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Quick note:

We'll be building SETI a few new workstations once we can nail down specifics. Also Bane won't be replaced for now, the new servers will be handling Bane's tasks as I understand it.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

We'll be building SETI a few new workstations once we can nail down specifics.

Being a GPUUG donation the workstations should be outfitted with decent GPU crunchers. :)

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We'll be building SETI a few new workstations once we can nail down specifics.

Being a GPUUG donation the workstations should be outfitted with decent GPU crunchers. :)

You may jest, but it's actually a very good point. AFAIK, they don't even have in-house hardware suitable for developing - or even testing - GPU apps. Even if they haven't got the spare manpower hours to develop CUDA, OpenCL, or any other flavour of coprocessor apps, they need to be able to test/verify contributed code, and to reproduce reported problems.

We'll be building SETI a few new workstations once we can nail down specifics.

Being a GPUUG donation the workstations should be outfitted with decent GPU crunchers. :)

You may jest, but it's actually a very good point. AFAIK, they don't even have in-house hardware suitable for developing - or even testing - GPU apps. Even if they haven't got the spare manpower hours to develop CUDA, OpenCL, or any other flavour of coprocessor apps, they need to be able to test/verify contributed code, and to reproduce reported problems.

I'm quite serious actually. Mandatory GPU should be a condition for getting the donations. The trademark of the GPUUG if you will. A funny and nice gesture at the same time. And if they actually have a use for them in their work other than crunching, that's great.

Obviously I'm not in a position to make the rules, but that's my suggestion to the GPUUG.

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We'll be building SETI a few new workstations once we can nail down specifics.

Being a GPUUG donation the workstations should be outfitted with decent GPU crunchers. :)

You may jest, but it's actually a very good point. AFAIK, they don't even have in-house hardware suitable for developing - or even testing - GPU apps. Even if they haven't got the spare manpower hours to develop CUDA, OpenCL, or any other flavour of coprocessor apps, they need to be able to test/verify contributed code, and to reproduce reported problems.

I'm quite serious actually. Mandatory GPU should be a condition for getting the donations. The trademark of the GPUUG if you will. A funny and nice gesture at the same time. And if they actually have a use for them in their work other than crunching, that's great.

Obviously I'm not in a position to make the rules, but that's my suggestion to the GPUUG.

Except, of course where the GPUUG project is to supply a server, where it would be inappropriate to expect that system to provide crunch resource for the S@H work as well as the database, networking or other task it is expected to do.

In my experience, trying to get a database server to also to crunching-type work leads to considerable issues with tuning and server set-up such that it tends to do neither task well.

Let us supply the servers that S@H need, not a system that has hardware that cannot be sensibly used.

Of course, if we are supplying a workstation for a project staff member to use for their day-to-day work, then a GPU would make sense, and if it can be used for S@H crunch as well, then all the better.

Just my 2 pennyworth.

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Happy Crunching,

Graham

Except, of course where the GPUUG project is to supply a server, where it would be inappropriate to expect that system to provide crunch resource for the S@H work as well as the database, networking or other task it is expected to do.

Agree. I was only making that suggestion in regards to the workstations. Servers should feed crunchers, not be the crunchers they are feeding.

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We provide the SAH guys with exactly what they ask for. They've asked for basic workstations this round so that's what we will provide. I'd rather get them simple work stations and use the remainder for future projects vs getting them equipment that isn't needed.

This practice helps us stretch our donors funds. If down the road they ask us for a machine that would make member Speedbump blush, we will provide that as well. Until then we will continue to donate items that match their exact specs.

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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org