[Bioclusters] Workstation Selection for Bioinformatics Research

[Chris Pepper]

At 2:22 PM -0400 2003/04/10, Andrew Fant wrote:
>On Thu, 10 Apr 2003, Chris Dagdigian wrote:


>  > You need to be careful with your hardware selection if you expect to do
>>  serious visualization work on your workstations. Make sure that whatever
>>  graphics card / monitor combination you get is _well_ supported by the
>>  X11/Linux distro you plan to use. It may be worth aquiring a test
>>  machine before you actually commit dollars to a bigger purchase. It is
>>  probably also worthwhile to try to find people who are currently using
>>  any workstation combo you plan to aquire to see what real users think.
>
>I'll go way out on a limb here and say that if you are going to want to do
>serious visualization under Linux, you will want a NVidia video card.  I
>know that free-software purists will object to their binary-only drivers,
>but I have been using them on this box for 6 months now without a hitch,
>and it has run much faster than anything that uses DRI (like the Radeon),
>and the glx support has been far more robust than a radeon or with the
>intel chipsets.  Not the cheapest solution, but one that you probably
>won't regret either.

	The nVidia drivers are a PITA to install, and often mean you 
can't upgrade kernels when you want to (because they trail RH kernels 
a bit). Intel 8xx onboard video stinks.

>  > Dell tends to be not that great with Linux at the presales / tech
>>  support level (sometimes I get lucky) but their Linux guru's hang out on
>>  the dell-poweredge mailing list and have been amazingly helpful with
>>  supporting Linux across the entire Dell server line. As an example,
>>  check out Matt Domsch's website at http://www.domsch.com/linux/ -- that
>>  site is the first place I check when I'm cluster building with Dell
>>  PowerEdge boxes.
>
>I'm using a Dell 530 Workstation myself.  Workstation presales linux
>support is pretty spotty at Dell, and if you want RedHat pre-installed,
>they will be very restrictive about your hardware choices.  I finally just
>ordered a better system with XP preinstalled, and when I got the system
>I was able to boot the install CDs for Linux, and everything worked,
>cleanly.  I can't vouch for on-board modem support, but I didn't have any
>hardware support issues, and this was under a non-RedHat distro.  Great
>hardware, even if you have to eat the cost of a XP license to get it.

	For dual-booting, you should be aware that Dell supports ONE 
OS per system. If you buy it with Linux, they don't include Windows 
support on that system, and vice-versa. I've deal with 
driver/compatibility issues in the past where "boot into Windows and 
let's take a look" was the only answer we could get. Their driver 
support is also very spotty, so be sure you get the video card you 
want (some SKUs come with different components during the life of the 
product, which can be frustrating if you were happy with the the ATI 
Dell was shipping in this model last month)...

	If you get a Dell rep to commit to supporting both OSes, or 
pay for the support, Dell's pricing is great. All I've gotten was 
sympathy, and an offer to take money for pay-as-you-go support for 
the OS Dell didn't ship.


						Chris Pepper
-- 
Chris Pepper:               <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University:     <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>