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PoP -
Syracuse University Physics Computational Cluster
Installation photo-log
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24 April 1998
Out of caution we bought one node
for testing before ordering the
others. RedHat5.0 installed without problems and getting the two
processors working was a simple case of recompiling the kernel
with SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) enabled. We ran
a few simulation codes and everything checked out well so
we then ordered the other 13 nodes.
If you're curious, you can check out the
inside of this machine.
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14 May 1998
Lots of boxes! The other 13 nodes arrived in 7 large boxes with
thousands of `peanuts'. The network cards were ordered separately
and ended up taking about a week longer to arrive so the new
nodes had a little time to `chill' before being pressed into
service (it really is cold in the machine room).
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7 June 1998
PoP lives. After several delays waiting for network cards,
network cabling,
a little trouble with getting the RedHat `kickstart' installation
to work, and a conference trip, I finally got all 14 nodes up and
running.
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The networking is pretty simple. In each machine there is a single
100Mbit/s ethernet card connected to the switch (shown here). The
switch has 16 ports: one for each of the 14 nodes, one for an extra
machine that shares that rack and one to connect to the rest-of-the-world.
Sadly, our connection to the rest of the world is currently only 10Mbit/s.
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Round the back isn't exactly beautiful but at least it isn't
completely out of control. Having saved about $1500 by not buying
keyboard/video switches we have to manually plug keyboard and
video cables into a particular node to do the install (an infrequent
event!). Otherwise there is just a power cable and a network
cable for each machine.
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8 June 1998
PoP becomes useful! One CPU was found to be dead
so we actually have 13 dual-processor nodes and 1 single-processor
node. However, the system seems to work and real physics
simulations are now being run...
15 June 1998
Replacement processor arrived, fitted in about 5 minutes. PoP
now has 14 dual-processor nodes.
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29 December 1998
PoP grows to 16 nodes, 32 processors.
Two new nodes each with 2 350MHz Pentium II processors were
added. This has also required expansion of the switch to
20 ports since we now require 16 for the nodes and 1 for
connection to the rest of the world. Otherwise, PoP looks
much the same (just bigger!).
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Back to PoP homepage.
Written by
Simeon Warner, maintained by
Dan Kirkpatrick
Last updated 06 August 2010
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