Lots to talk about today. Let's start with the weekend: we had the usual drill of running out of raw data files for the Astropulse splitters to chew on. Due to file transfer speeds up from our off-site archival storage (NERSC) we can only put a few files up a day, which Astropulse goes through in no time. This isn't a big deal, but in order to regulate this a little better we adjusted the weights of the two applications so that the feeder gives 97% of its slots to multibeam, and 3% to Astropulse. This shouldn't change the current regular behavior, but will help smooth out the peak periods I think. There's still some BOINC logic changes that have to happen to keep Astropulse from taking over too many systems.

Some good news: Intel once again came through with a slew of donations - five servers to be exact. These are mostly test/used systems so three require some TLC to bring on line (a couple of those may be used as parts to boost up one of our current compute servers). However one of the remaining two will get our attention right away and became the new mysql replica server. I haven't confirmed the specs, but I've been told they each contain four 6-core CPUs and 64GB RAM. Intel would like us to do some benchmark tests right away, so expect a new server (or two) in the fold in the coming weeks. I guess I need to update the hardware donation page...

Of course, the release of Fedora Core 11 has slipped a couple times, but I hope to start a major wave of OS upgrades (or installs) next week as well.

The other big project is dealing with thumper - our science database server. We're replacing a bad drive tomorrow, which means rebooting it, which in turn means it will go through some painful RAID resync upon coming back up (due to its drive naming issues). We know we can fix this resync problem by reinstalling the OS, which we'll do when FC11 is out and we tested a similar install on bambi (the secondary science database server) first. Once that's working, we'd like to re-RAID the data drives (from RAID5 to RAID10) to vastly speed up throughput (necessary for NTPCkr performance). But to do that we need to get all the raw data off first. And to do that we need to first install a kernel update on worf (the NAS from Overland Storage which we are beta testing) so we can safely move all our raw data there. Oy. So many ducks to get in a row. Anyway.. one step at a time...

- 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 Intel!!!!

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Yeah Intel.
One step at a time.
Now if you could work one hour on, one hour off so there wouldn't be any wait time ;)

Take the time you need to do the job right and rested.

Thanks for all the hard work.

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Thanks to Intel

5 new toys for Matt. Have fun Matt..............

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Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....

Many thanks to Intel, and once again to Overland Storage.

Hope the new servers come up OK and fill some weak spots.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

'. . . One step at a time.'

Matt, Thanks for the Post / News - Good to hear regarding Intel - bravisimo!!!

As usual - Kudo's to Each of You @ Berkeley - Accolades to All . . .

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

Thanks INTEL!

Thumper... might be made to run Solaris/ZFS...

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mic.

holy *****, 4x6 cores in each? are you sure? that's great! Thanks intel!

Intel would like us to do some benchmark tests right away

Thank you Intel for this generous donation. Out of interest what type type of benchmarks dose Intel require?

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New toys are always good/great. Does this mean that some of the lesser hardware can be removed from the project to make the system easier to maintain?

6 cores? Sounds like the Penryn-derived Dunnington. If you look at the die in the linked article, its monstrous--basically three Core 2 dies glued together along with some extra L3 cache. It should serve the project well!

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