Humanizing the Distance (Mar 08 2012)

The good news: The two new servers arrived (bought by donation made to, and assembled and shipped by, the GPU Users Group)! Here they are unpacked on the table in the center of our lab, along with the 45-disk JBOD (also donated by the GPUUG).



From left to right, that's the JBOD, georgem (Supermicro box), and paddym (Intel box). I'll have better pix when we actually start playing with this stuff. These will go a LONG way towards upgrading (and retiring) a lot of the older systems in the closet. We are excited, to say the least.

In less good news, it pretty much seems that bane (the former scheduling server) is toast. We hoped to revive it and use it to replace a bigger/older internal admin machine, but no dice. Fine. Meanwhile people who diligently scan our network graphs may have noticed how "grassy" they are (as opposed to flat) due to bursty activity. The obvious first suspect was synergy, now loaded with the extra burden of the scheduling server. Wrong. The next suspect was carolyn, the mysql server, as it was getting a little extra I/O this week due to a science database backup being stored on its internal drives. Nope. We ultimately found what we think is the cause: turns out upon reboot from the power outage on Monday bruno (the upload server) started up an automatic RAID verify, which is slowing uploads down. This verify should end sometime tonight, and things are already seeming to flatten out.

Also... I've been wasting way too much time today getting a new desktop for Dan in order (as his died on Monday as well). Luckily Jeff had an old shuttle PC he donated from home kicking around. However it's been a hilarious comedy of errors. The first two drives I put in it failed during OS install. The third drive worked great, but I installed an older version of Fedora to save Dan from having to deal with (the atrocity which is) Gnome 3. Well, while configuring that OS I was stumped why I couldn't upgrade any of the security packages. Turns out that version of the OS was already end-of-lifed. Aaaah! Well, I'm installing the latest version of the OS now and Dan will have to just deal with learning the Gnome 3 ropes. The irony of course is that, due to obvious priorities (because Dan can't work) I've been spending most of my day fighting with a very old desktop PC, while three shiny new boxes on the table behind me go untouched. So be it.

- Matt

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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Thanks for the update Matt, nice new shiny hardware there, :-)

Claggy

That's sweet seeing the JBOD, and two servers! Thank you so much for posting that picture, now that they have arrived. I know things take time, and as always, stuff happens.

Steve
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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

Nice update. I like the new shiny stuff you got today. Hope the fiddling with the old busted stuff can end soon with the installation of the new stuff.
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It's sorta nice to see all of our donors efforts displayed on one table. Thanks sincerely Matt for the picture and report. I hope you guys have fun installing all of the new shiny hardware!
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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

Pretty Pretty New Toys. ;))
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I Desire Peace and Justice, Jim Scott

cant wait to see the difference :)

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def looking forward to its installation

Thank you for the updates and the pic, Matt!!
I feel your frustration having to work on old boxen whilst the shiny new toys beckon to you...LOL.

What the heck did they do during those electrical tests, eh? Mebbe time to put in a claim to their insurance company for damages.

Hope things smooth out for you and you can get back to working with some new stuff.

Meow!
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"Ask not, what your kitty can do for you. Ask what you can do for your kitty."

As it is kitten, so shall it be done.

Matt,

I second those thanks.

I'm so glad to see the servers unboxed again, and I really am looking forward to seeing the difference they can make to the project.

This means a lot to me.

"And User of the Year goes to..."

Live long and prosper Graham.
Deeply moved, deeply appreciated.
Alex S

What, no card readers? No blinking (incandescent) lights? That can't be a computer!... ;-)
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Umm...Jeff can't work on his own machine???? Really??? Not meant as an insult but....?

Thanks for the update
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