Opterons (was Re: [Bioclusters] Any issues porting applications
to OS X?)
Chris Dagdigian
bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
Fri, 05 Mar 2004 11:39:30 -0500
The opteron mention brings up another question I wanted to ask this list--
What Linux distributions are people using for Opteron based machines?
I have a pair of IBM e325 opteron servers in the lab/office and
initially have been using Suse 9.0 on them mainly because I know that
IBM and Suse are tight and I figured that it would be the safe choice
since I'm still slightly worried about the somewhat new support for
Suse 9 on Opteron has been great so far. I'm going to start
experimenting with Tao Linux (www.taolinux.org) which is a 'generic'
form of RH Enterprise Linux built from source rpm files next.
After Tao I want to try Fedora, Fedora-legacy and the actual Redhat
branded AS or ES products. Anything else I should try? any
recommendations from people using opterons in production settings?
-Chris
Arnie Miles wrote:
> Has anyone considered Opterons? Our preliminary investigations indicate
> that the Opterons have a considerably better bang/buck ratio then
> anything else out there right now, particularly Xeon, even in 32 bit
> configuration. We're getting dual processor Opterons in the under $3k
> price range.
>
> I'm anxious to try out my first G5 cluster one day, hopefully soon, but
> the Opteron path makes more applications available to me.
>
> Arnie Miles
> Advanced Research Computing
> Georgetown University
>
> On Fri, 2004-03-05 at 10:53, Michael Chute wrote:
>
>>For my two cents I would have to disagree with the Xeon approach. A
>>cluster of Xserves is probley going to give you more speed and storage
>>for the buck than a Xeon machine. We have a small cluster of Xserves
>>running osX server and we find that it is very fast, and the new g5
>>slusters are even faster. Another alternative that has been done in
>>the past is to actually run Linux on Xserves. I don't know the details
>>of this but I do know that this has been done. If you look at the
>>bioteam software as well there are over 200 bioinformatics tools
>>included with the package and they all have a gui interface which is
>>very nice for the average user. As far as management features you
>>can't beat osx server. Everything is so easy to do you don't need a
>>bunch of IT people to do it for you. I am a microbiologist and I admin
>>our cluster. I think the "most tools for bioinformatics under linux"
>>is not exactly true. I don't think you will find much trouble finding
>>an osx port for most of the tools. FYI there is going to be a webcast
>>about the Xserve cluster for use in bioinformatics next thursday, you
>>might want to watch, you might get some of your questions answered.
>>
>>http://education.apple.com/webcast/workgroupcluster/
>>
>>Mike
>>
>>Michael D. Chute
>>BSL-3 Lab Manager
>>Naval Medical Research Center
>>Biological Defense Research Directorate
>>Suite 1N29
>>503 Robert Grant Ave
>>Silver Spring, MD 20910
>>Voice: 301-319-7529
>>Fax: 301-319-7513
>>On Mar 5, 2004, at 10:41 AM, Tim Cutts wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 5 Mar 2004, at 15:32, Christopher Porter wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>We're in the market for a cluster; most of our options are
>>>>Xeon/Linux, but one is a cluster of XServe G5s running OS X. We're
>>>>going to run some benchmarks to see how the performance compares, but
>>>>some in of our group have expressed concern that 'the vast majority
>>>>bioinformatics software is developed on Linux', and 'there may be a
>>>>long time lag before new software is available on OS X'.
>>>
>>>Most stuff compiles quite cleanly. You could get bitten though with
>>>anything that builds shared libraries. OS X dylib bundles are *very*
>>>different from normal UNIX shared objects. Have a look at the
>>>O'Reilly book "MacOS X for Unix Geeks" which is very small, but covers
>>>some of this stuff.
>>>
>>>There are various other gotchas as well, but I don't know about them
>>>in detail.
>>>
>>>
>>>>I have never had problems getting software I need to run on OS X, but
>>>>I wondered if anyone can provide me with examples of applications
>>>>that won't run on OS X, or are Linux only (only binaries released &
>>>>no source available).
>>>
>>>I suspect you'll get much more bang-per-buck with Xeon machines.
>>>You'll also probably get better management features, although how
>>>crucial that is rather depends on how large a cluster you want to get.
>>>
>>>Personally, although I love Macs, and have one as my day-to-day
>>>machine, I'm currently happier with Linux for the larger scale stuff.
>>>
>>>Tim
>>>
>>>--
>>>Dr Tim Cutts
>>>Informatics Systems Group
>>>Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
>>>Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SA, UK
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Bioclusters maillist - Bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
>>>https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Bioclusters maillist - Bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
>>https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
>
> ==================
> Arnie Miles
> Systems Administrator, Advanced Research Computing (ARC)
> Adjunct Assistant Professor, Computer Science Dept.
> Georgetown University
> 401 Reiss Science
> 37th and O Streets NW,
> Washington, DC 20057
> 202-687-9379
>
> http://www.georgetown.edu/users/adm35/ (Personal)
> http://www.clusters.arc.georgetown.edu/ (GUPPI Initiative)
> http://www.georgetown.edu/research/arc/ (Division)
> ==================
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bioclusters maillist - Bioclusters@bioinformatics.org
> https://bioinformatics.org/mailman/listinfo/bioclusters
--
Chris Dagdigian, <dag@sonsorol.org>
BioTeam - Independent life science IT & informatics consulting
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