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2. Hardware

This section covers the hardware choices I've made. Unless noted in the known hardware issues section, assume that everything works really well.

Hardware installation is also fairly straight-forward unless otherwise noted, with most of the details covered by the manuals. For each section, the hardware is listed in the order of purchase (most recent is listed first).

2.1 Node hardware

32 machines have the following setup each:

• 2 AMD Palamino MP XP 1800+ 1.53 GHz CPUs
• Tyan S2460 Dual Socket-A/MP motherboard
• Kingston 512mb PC2100 DDR-266MHz REG ECC RAM
• 1 20 GB Maxtor UDMA/100 7200rpm HD
• 1 120 GB Maxtor 5400rpm ATA100 HD
• Asus CD-A520 52x CDROM
• 1.44mb floppy drive
• ATI Expert 98 8mb AGP video card
• IN-WIN P4 300ATX Mid Tower case
• Intel PCI PRO-100 10/100Mbps network card

32 machines have the following setup each:

• 2 Pentium III 1 GHz Intel CPUs
• Supermicro 370 DLE Dual PIII-FCPGA motherboard
• 2 256 MB 168-pin PC133 Registered ECC Micron RAM
• 1 20 GB Maxtor ATA/66 5400 RPM HD
• 1 40 GB Maxtor UDMA/100 7200 RPM HD
• Asus CD-S500 50x CDROM
• 1.4 MB floppy drive
• ATI Expert 98 8 MB PCI video card
• IN-WIN P4 300ATX Mid Tower case

2.2 Server hardware

1 server for external use (dissemination of information) with the following setup:

• 2 Pentium III 1 GHz Intel CPUs
• Supermicro 370 DLE Dual PIII-FCPGA motherboard
• 2 256 MB 168-pin PC133 Registered ECC Micron RAM
• 1 20 GB Maxtor ATA/66 5400 RPM HD
• 2 40 GB Maxtor UDMA/100 7200 RPM HD
• Asus CD-S500 50x CDROM
• 1.4 MB floppy drive
• ATI Expert 98 8 MB PCI video card
• Full-tower case with 300W PS

2.3 Desktop hardware

1 desktop with the following setup:

• 2 Intel Xeon 1.7 GHz 256K 400FS
• Supermicro P4DCE Dual Xeon motherboard
• 4 256mb RAMBUS 184-Pin 800 MHz memory
• 2 120 GB Maxtor ATA/100 5400 RPM HD
• 1 60 GB Maxtor ATA/100 7200 RPM HD
• 52X Asus CD-A520 INT IDE CDROM
• 1.4 MB floppy drive
• Leadtex 64 MB GF2 MX400 AGP
• Creative SB LIVE Value PCI 5.1
• Microsoft Natural Keyboard
• Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
• Supermicro SC760 full-tower case with 400W PS

2 desktops with the following setup:

• 2 AMD K7 1.2g/266 MP Socket A CPU
• Tyan S2462NG Dual Socket A motherboard
• 4 256mb PC2100 REG ECC DDR-266Mhz
• 3 40 GB Maxtor UDMA/100 7200 RPM HD
• 50X Asus CD-A520 INT IDE CDROM
• 1.4 MB floppy drive
• Chaintech Geforce2 MX200 32mg AGP
• Creative SB LIVE Value PCI
• Microsoft Natural Keyboard
• Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
• Full-tower case with 300W PS

2 desktops with the following setup:

• 2 Pentium III 1 GHz Intel CPUs
• Supermicro 370 DLE Dual PIII-FCPGA motherboard
• 4 256 MB 168-pin PC133 Registered ECC Micron RAM
• 3 40 GB Maxtor UDMA/100 7200 RPM HD
• Asus CD-S500 50x CDROM
• 1.4 MB floppy drive
• Jaton Nvidia TNT2 32mb PCI
• Creative SB LIVE Value PCI
• Microsoft Natural Keyboard
• Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
• Full-tower case with 300W PS

2 desktops with the following setup:

• 2 Pentium III 1 GHz Intel CPUs
• Supermicro 370 DLE Dual PIII-FCPGA motherboard
• 4 256 MB 168-pin PC133 Registered ECC Micron RAM
• 3 40 GB Maxtor UDMA/100 7200 RPM HD
• Mitsumi 8x/4x/32x CDRW
• 1.4 MB floppy drive
• Jaton Nvidia TNT2 32mb PCI
• Creative SB LIVE Value PCI
• Microsoft Natural Keyboard
• Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
• Full-tower case with 300W PS

4 desktops with the following setup:

• 2 Pentium III 1 GHz Intel CPUs
• Supermicro 370 DE6 Dual PIII-FCPGA motherboard
• 4 256 MB 168-pin PC133 Registered ECC Micron RAM
• 3 40 GB Maxtor UDMA/100 7200 RPM HD
• Ricoh 32x12x10 CDRW/DVD Combo EIDE
• 1.4 MB floppy drive
• Asus V7700 64mb GeForce2-GTS AGP video card
• Creative SB Live Platinum 5.1 sound card
• Microsoft Natural Keyboard
• Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
• Full-tower case with 300W PS

2.4 Miscellaneous/accessory hardware

Backup:

• 2 Sony 20/40 GB DSS4 SE LVD DAT

Monitors:

• 1 22" Viewsonic P220F 0.25-0.27m monitor
• 4 21" Sony CPD-G500 .24mm monitor
• 2 18" Viewsonic VP181 LCD monitor
• 1 17" Viewsonic VE170 LCD monitor

2.5 Putting-it-all-together hardware

We use KVM switches with a cheap monitor to connect up and "look" at all the machines:

• 15" .28dp XLN CTL Monitor
• 3 Belkin Omniview 16-Port Pro Switches
• 40 KVM cables

While this is a nice solution, I think it's kind of needless. What we need is a small hand held monitor that can plug into the back of the PC (operated with a stylus, like the Palm). I don't plan to use more monitor switches/KVM cables.

Networking is important:

• 1 Cisco Catalyst 3448 XL Enterprise Edition 48 port network switch.
• 1 Netgear FS524 24 port network switch

2.6 Costs

Our vendor is Hard Drives Northwest ( http://www.hdnw.com). For each compute node in our cluster (containing two processors), we paid about $1500-$2000, including taxes. Generally, our goal is to keep each node to below $2000.00 (which is what our desktop machines cost).