No real server news today, but I'll respond to a couple things mentioned in the previous thread.

I said we have about 150 CPUs in our server fold. Of course, looking at the list of machines on the server status page you see about 40. First, this isn't a complete list - it only contains public facing or critical servers. We have a lot of other systems that are doing tangential tasks or behind-the-scenes stuff. We also have several appliances (like the NAS's) which contain multiple CPUs as well. Still, this number may be inflated a bit due to hyperthreading on some servers. I think the actual number of physical CPUs is still above 100 though. Plus, as I was calculating this just now I found that two of the CPUs on sidious have apparently died. This is no surprise - it's a used/experimental machine and had CPU issues since day one, which is why it is the replica mysql server and not the master.

The talk (which happens next week) should be viewable over the net after it happens. I don't think we're going to do live streaming or anything like that. We're going to meet and discuss early next week what our options are.

- 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

Matt,
I'm looking forward to hearing your speech, i know you put a lot of time and effort into it. Programming is easy, writing public speeches is difficult...LOL

Thanks Matt,
John.

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writing public speeches is difficult...

Actually writing public speeches is easy for me. The hard part is shutting up once I start speaking. Anyway, I get only 20 minutes, saving time so Jeff could talk about the NTPCkr. And most of the time so far has been spent fighting with OpenOffice Impress.

- 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

The hard part is shutting up once I start speaking.

ROFLMAO

I too am looking forward to hearing your talk. I am assuming it'll be made available somewhere on the S@H web site, or at least a link to it. Thanks for all the great work you guys do!

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Thanks for all the hard work Matt, Jeff & team in the lab. I'm the opposite I find it really hard to write a speach, best of luck with your speach I look ford to reading or viewing. Out of all the CPUs you have in the server room are any used solely to processes Seti? If the answer is yes how many workunits a day does it process?

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{SNIP]
Plus, as I was calculating this just now I found that two of the CPUs on sidious have apparently died. - Matt
[SNIP]

Is this, perhaps, one of the causes of the problems with the replica DB?

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BOINC WIKI

{SNIP]
Plus, as I was calculating this just now I found that two of the CPUs on sidious have apparently died. - Matt
[SNIP]

Is this, perhaps, one of the causes of the problems with the replica DB?

Ahhhh . . . Sidious is becoming Insidious

How does a CPU just die and the server continue to function?

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How does a CPU just die and the server continue to function?

If there are 2, 4, 8 or 16 CPUs on a server, one can die & it will still function. If there is only one CPU & it dies, then the server dies with it.

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Grant
Darwin NT

How does a CPU just die and the server continue to function?

Some very high end servers can also implement Lockstep processing. It's somewhat analogous to RAID 1 but for CPU's. Likewise, similar technology exists for RAM redundacy such as Chipkill, which enables recovery from a hardware failure of an entire RAM module. SETI doesn't necessarily use these but it goes to show that sometimes what makes server platforms unique and not just a rebranding of consumer chips is their certified ability to recover from disaster scenarios that are usually showstoppers for a normal desktop. In IT world it is called Reliability, Availability, and Serviceablity (RAS) and is important in mission critical and business mainframes.

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150 you know matt thats really not so many say if you worked out from helpers like me what would that bring your processing power up to. i fiddle and build pc,s if i were able to afford the power bill i have four quad core pc,s plus about twenty working 3gig cpu p5 units ad in a couple of dual core macs to that i have whoa at least 36 some on a network.

here is a doozy over all us voulenteer,s what would you think we have its mind bogleing really. id let you use the lot but i cant afford the power and when gaming at friends while out for a smoke i really have seen sparks jumping across power lines. say thirty pc,s in one house. i admit a have three zeon quads but the cpu,s are at best 2.8gig. and they eat power.

i would love to see some guess of the procesing power of all the voulenteers even a wild gues would be fun.

sincerly carl portman perth wa

xps 420, q6600 2.4GHZ , gtx 260 216 core. 32 bit vista

P-mobile Dell Laptop 1.6 GHZ

P4 HT, 3.06 GHZ, PCI-E 9400 GT, xp 32 bit.

P4 2.8, pci 9400 gt,

various projects

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I recommend Secunia PSI: http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/
Go Georgia Tech.