Mark started it so while we're asking loaded questions... =) I recently visited a large educational institution (that shall remain nameless) that hosts an excellent, world class, science research team. They also have a reasonably large Beowulf environment (over 100 dual nodes).
Now maybe it was just the people I was talking too (management) but I get the distinct impression that they treat their 'Wulf as an 'appliance'. It came as a great disappointment :/ Reliability is their prime (only?) concern. Researchers are expected to address any performance issues with their code. Well, yeah, OK... with >their code< but what about the underlying infrastructure? Who keeps the Wulf 'tool' nice and sharp? For this code does anyone *understand* how to check the Wulf behavior and see if its helping or hindering? I know from personal experience that one piece of code they run would be expected to be CPU bound... but the interconnect plays a bigger part that *I* expected (and I've spent a fair bit of time under the bonnet... with still more things to explore). What about using a second NIC to off load the admin traffic? How deeply have you looked into your compiler switches? Looked into a FNN topology? These and other questions... Obviously reality bites. Staff cost money. So does extra hardware. You don't want to have a sick, flakey, Wulf that can't keep the customers happy. However, knowing the size of their research staff and what they're likely to get paid, I'd have thought a least one person with the skills to keep the Wulf *near* the edge would be a good thing? In fairness, maybe I got the wrong impression. Maybe I was just talking to the wrong people. It was just the overall feel I got. The Wulf was big and seemed fast and they were happy. I was just disappointed that they didn't seem prepared to put a tad of TLC into their Wulf. Wouldn't dropping a run from four days to three be worth investigating? [Sigh] Is this typical of educational institutions? Am I missing some consideration that would explain the apparent apathy? I'm prepared to accept I'm just being naive. However... If you're in Australia, run a Wulf that you like to see run nice and sharp. Drop me a line... I'm looking for a job and you could be my kinda place! :) Stevo _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
