Most of the people building large clusters have good relationships with dell and get a significant discount off the Dell list. This might be because a reasonable cluster is $100k and on up.
Supermicro seems popular, they had a better choice of options about 18 months ago, but maybe dell has formed up behind them. Just avoid the dell hard drives, they are a super-rip off. Which btw means you'll have to avoid dells, because the _only_ way to get the dell disk trays which are required is to buy dell hard drives (3-4x markup btw). -ryan On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 2:36 PM, Jack Levin <[email protected]> wrote: > We are doing it with system integrator called Racklogic in San Jose. > We tell them what to build and they do it per our intructions. We are > running 3 datacenters with 500 servers however, and 20 Gbps of traffic > to the world... so, a lot of our stuff is custom made. > > -Jack > > On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Jason Lotz <[email protected]> wrote: >> Thanks for the replies. My take away is that most organizations are buying >> from vendors (Dell, HP, SuperMicro, HP, etc.) While "build it yourself" is >> an approach, I'm not hearing a lot of companies that are doing it. >> >> Thanks again, >> Jason >> >> On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Michael Segel >> <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> >>> Well I usually go to Home Depot, even though there's an ACE a block away... >>> :-) >>> (Just kidding) >>> >>> If you're keen on Dell, I don't know if they are still making R410s. >>> >>> They're 1U so you can put in 4 Hot Swap drives giving you roughly 7TB per >>> node. >>> They have multiple 1GBe ports so you can bond them if you need to. Assuming >>> you're using 'standard' SATA drives, then >>> you will max out your drive i/o before you max out your networking >>> bandwidth so if you do port bonding, you'll have enough head room. >>> >>> For your ToR switch, I'd recommend the new switch by Blade. >>> >>> http://www.bladenetwork.net/?pi_ad_id=6155346275&gclid=CISh1Y7khKUCFYPV5wod_X3kQA >>> Note: IBM bought them out so prices may vary... >>> >>> They announced a new ToR Switch that had 42 (I think) 1 GBe ports w 4 10GBe >>> uplink ports. >>> Definitely something to consider because if you try to 'trunk' your switch >>> over a 1GBe port you'll see the bottleneck between racks hit you hard. >>> >>> >>> If you've got the budget you could go with 10GBe on the motherboard... or >>> go with SolarFlare's nic cards: >>> http://www.solarflare.com/index.php >>> >>> They have a sweet card that has 2 nic ports (SPIF) each capable of 10GBe >>> bidirectional (so the card handles 40GBe). >>> Definitely a good option if you're doing more things in memory, or you have >>> 8 drive or more per node. >>> Also gives you a future on your hardware. >>> Note: 10GBe isn't 'cheap' and most people don't need it. >>> 10K switch, 1K per nic card is a good budget price... >>> >>> If you want to get away from Dell, you can look at other hardware >>> providers, or you could build your own white boxes for less money, provided >>> you have people who know how to build, install and support your hardware/OS. >>> Most corporations don't do this because its easier to pick up the phone and >>> order a box already built and you get support. >>> >>> You may consider a hybrid approach. Go w Dell/IBM/Oracle/HP (weird saying >>> Oracle and not Sun) for your 'master nodes' [NN,SN,ZKs] where you have >>> raided drives (smaller) and more memory. >>> Go white box for your DN (RS) where if you lose a box, you just bring up a >>> new one in its place and re-balance. >>> >>> HTH >>> >>> -Mike >>> >>> >>> > From: [email protected] >>> > Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2010 09:21:03 -0400 >>> > Subject: Where do you get your hardware? >>> > To: [email protected] >>> > >>> > We are in the process of analyzing our options for the future purchases >>> of >>> > our Hadoop/HBase DN/RS servers. Currently, we purchase Dell PowerEdge >>> > R710's which work well for us. However, we know that there are other >>> > options that may give us more bang for our buck. >>> > >>> > I'm not as interested in knowing the specs of the machines that people >>> are >>> > using. Rather, I'm curious to know where you buy them from or if you are >>> > building them yourselves. >>> > >>> > Any feedback on how you acquire server hardware in your environment would >>> be >>> > greatly appreciated. >>> > >>> > Jason >>> >>> >> >
