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 Office: 617-665-6088, Mobile: 617-877-5498, Fax: 425-699-0193 PGP KeyID: 83D4310E iChat/AIM: bioteamdag Web: http://bioteam.net