Here is our latest minicluster design. We used the gumstix stagecoach.
It's nice, 196 Ovaros in a box. We had a number of failed attempts on an enclosure design: http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/Strongbox?authkey=Gv1sRgCI6PwZXM57iZ8gE# That was my first design, it was really quite compact and fun, and it was a huge pain to assemble. It hit the basic high points however: 7 nodes per stagecoach, 7 stagecoaches per shelf, a switch per shelf that reduced the outgoing enet cables to one. Power was a huge issue; 5V 80A per shelf, which was not fun. 10 GA wires never are. I know at least some people on this list know Mitch Williams. He came up with this: http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/StrongboxAtSC10?authkey=Gv1sRgCJbWpcfci73HxwE# It's quite elegant: self-contained shelves, with power supply, Rigrunner for fuses, continues the use of an 8-port switch per shelf, so each shelf has one 120V power cable and one enet cable coming out. Plan 9 is in the works. This is a nice test and development platform for software. We're going to make the design available in a way that people can easily build their own. ron
