Hi everyone -- I work at a university in a smallish department, and I'm helping a faculty member craft an RFP for a smallish cluster: about $250k budget, taking up half a rack or so, and around 500 cores. We plan to manage/install the cluster using ROCKS. I expect bids from the usual medium/big vendors. It isn't huge, but it's a couple of firsts for me:
* First cluster (woot) * First RFP of this size I'm concerned about acceptance testing, especially after hearing about the problems with the Intrepid cluster[1] at the latest LISA conference, and I wanted to ask what other admins have done about this. My questions: * Have you included acceptance testing for large hardware purchases before? Why or why not? * What have you specified in the tests? Do you have a template you can share? How specific did you have to be in your RFP about what constituted failure? * What resistance, if any, have you found from the vendors? What about management? (I heard stories at LISA about acceptance testing being whittled down in negotiations in return for concessions on price or other things.) If you had to negotiate, what did you give up/trade? * Have you had to reject anything, or send anything back to be fixed? What reaction did you get from the vendor? I've found one paper[2] on this subject -- very helpful -- but I'm hoping that someone can chime in on the larger/squishier (to use Adam Moskowitz' term) issues around this. I realize these are basic questions, but I hope I'm on the right side of the "how do I do this" vs. "please do my work for me" line. Thanks, Hugh Footnotes: [1] http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa10/tech/full_papers/Wilson.pdf [2] http://www2.cs.uh.edu/~openuh/hpcc07/papers/10-Muller.pdf -- Hugh Brown http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com Because the plural of Anecdote is Myth. Footnotes: _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
