CPU cluster

bin3

bin3

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OK so I got the envious task of speccing a server farm for a CPU based render cluster ...

So get a bunch of 2U racks, populate them with i7's or Xeon's, stick in a small hard drive and max the memory. Sounds easy right? Right ...

First problem: 2U racks. More scarce than eTol tags on a taxi ...
Second problem: New CPU series releases, nullifies all old bench marks.
Third: Oh the Rand ...

So anyway: Anybody know of any decent 2U bare bone chassis suppliers? Or almost bare-bone. With stock ...
 
I can't answer stock, but you can check with them yourself; but would this suit your needs?

bare.png


chassis-5.png


I [-]may[/-] am likely talking outta my arse now, but would these Supermicro cloud servers in 3U do the job? Turns out they're built on Haswell too.
 
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Going to look into rackmount.co.za, thanks !

I've been looking into Supermicro's as well: they are very close to ideal, especially something like the http://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/SuperBlade/ populated with a bunch of processor blades. The problem is that you are out let's say 80k just for the chassis (Superblade), even before you start populating with blades.
 
Just be careful with SuperMicro. Our SuperMicro servers (1U units with Intel Xeon X3440/X3450) have massive clock drift ! Like in the time would drift a couple of seconds per day!

Would these servers be used 24/7/365? If not, then why not consider launching a couple of cloud servers and run the tests there for a couple of hours and then shut down the servers again...
 
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bdt said:
^^ you mean like the Amazon EC2 platform that you can, it seems, pay for by the hour?
Click to expand...

Would love to just render everything on the cloud, and in the end we will probably go that way. At this stage though it's difficult to budget for an undisclosed amount of time rendering on the cloud, it's a bit easier to budget for a few machines that we can run for 24/7. Depending on how this goes, we'll either upscale, or go cloud :-)
 
Pada said:
Just be careful with SuperMicro. Our SuperMicro servers (1U units with Intel Xeon X3440/X3450) have massive clock drift ! Like in the time would drift a couple of seconds per day!
Click to expand...

Why don't you use NTP to sync your clocks at regular intervals from local stratum-2 servers?
http://www.time.org.za/
 
bdt said:
Is that server better to use than either igubu.~ or induna.saix.net ..or pretty much the same thing?
Click to expand...

Which server? It gives you a list of stratum-2 servers you can pick from, I just use the one from my ISP (telkom) which is closest, for me igubu.saix.net as I'm with Telkom for my ISP.
 
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