20040914: LDM/IDV hardware

>From: Mark Seefeldt <address@hidden>
>Organization: CU
>Keywords: 200409141802.i8EI2TnJ025240 LDM IDV hardware

Hi Mark,

>I am working at the University of Colorado at Boulder with CIRES.  We will 
>be part of the pilot program for the IDD-Antarctic and we are starting to 
>consider our options for a Linux box to support this project.

Excellent!

>As of now, 
>it appears that this Linux box will be running the LDM for IDD-Antarctic 
>along with IDV and probably McIDAS.

Sounds good.

>I have talked with Tom Whittaker to get his hardware recommendations and he 
>suggested the following:
>-fastest processor that you can afford (probably a minimum of 3.0 GHz)
>-a large amount of memory - minimum of 1 GB, preferably 2 GB
>-hard drive space - dependent on how much data is to be expected to be 
>retrieved by the LDM
>-quality graphics card - purchase either N-Vidia or ATI, minimum of 128 MB
>He also suggested that I bounce these recommendations off of you.
>
>What do you think of these recommendations, and are there any changes or 
>additional recommendations which you would have?

I agree with Tom W's recommendation wholeheartedly.  My experience is
that a system that will easily meet your needs -- and more -- can be
put together for very little money.  As an example, here is a list of
components I used when building a dual AMD Athlon MP 2800+ machine
back in May:

Dual Athlon MP 2800, 500 GB ATA 133 RAID, 80 GB ATA 133 system, etc.

 Qt Part                                 Price Vendor                  Shipping
---+------------------------------------+-----+-----------------------+--------
 3  Samsung 1 GB ECC REG 2100 DDR        $630  AC Micro                incl.
 2  AMD MP 2800 w/fans                   $370  SpartanTechnologies     $15
 2  MAXTOR 250GB 7200RPM ATA133 7Y250P0  $384  US-depot.com            free
 1  Tyan Tiger 760 MPX S2466N-4M         $187  Monarchcomputer.com     12.70
 1  NEC ND2500A Black DVD+-RW            $ 91  Acortech.com            incl.
 1  Antec Full-T case w/400W SX1040BII   $ 91  Newegg.com              $15
 1  Samsung 80GB 7200rpm 8MB SP0802N     $ 74  Monarchcomputer.com     ----
 1  GeForce 5200  128MB 8X AGP           $ 59  Chaintech               free  
 1  Promise Ultra133 TX2 ATA/133         $ 59  Monarchcomputer.com     ----
 1  Creative Labs Audio-PCI Sound CT4751 $ 29  Monarchcomputer.com     ----
 1  Microsoft Internet Keyboard PS2 OEM  $ 14  Acortech.com            free
 1  3COM 3C905C-TX 10/100 PCI            $ 12  iKOR Design             free
 2  Spire 80x80x25mm ball bearing fans   $ 12  iKOR Design             free
 1  Mitsumi 1.44MB Black Internal Floppy $  9  Acortech.com            free
 1  Microsoft Intelliwheel optical mouse $  7  Acortech.com            free
                                         ----                          ----
                                         2028                            43
Total: $2071

I would also think seriously about including a UPS in the equipment you
are purchasing, assuming, of course, that it is needed in the
enviornment in which the machine will run.  I was able to buy a 1000 VA
UPS for $80, so deals can be found.

Given that the machine above has a 0.5 TB RAID and 3 GB of RAM, it is
pretty inexpensive.  As you can see from the list, the biggest single
hit in cost was the memory at $210/GB.  I believe that this same system
today would cost on the order of $1800-1900 mainly since the cost of
250 GB hard drives has come down considerably since May (CompUSA is
selling the exact same disk this week for $130!).  By the way, the 3 GB
of RAM may have been overkill in this sytem.  The more typical
workstation we use here at the UPC has 2 GB of RAM.

>Is there any advantage to getting a multi-processor system?

It depends on exactly what you will be using the machine for.  It is my
impression that the volume of data that will flow in the IDD-Antarctic
will be small in comparison to what is generally available in the IDD
(hourly volumes for all datastreams available in the IDD average over
2.5 GB), so processing would be easy with a system less well configured
than the one I outlined above.  You may consider, for instance, putting
together a single processor AMD Opteron or Athlon 64 machine.  Since I
have not been looking for pricing on such a motherboard/processor, I
can't comment on how this might increase or decrease the cost over the
dual processor machine above.

One last comment.  I assume that you will be running Linux on this
machine (for the LDM and the IDV).  The machine above is running Fedora
Core 1 Linux.  In order to get good video performance in the IDV, we
included a kernel-loadable module for the Nvidia video card we
purchased.  This was free, but it requires that the module be rebuilt
each time the OS is upgraded.  We (one of our system adminstrators)
developed a script that does this automatically the first time a
machine has been rebooted after the OS has been upgraded.

>Thank You

No worries.

>**********************************
>Mark Seefeldt
>Polar Climate and Meteorology
>CIRES / PAOS
>University of Colorado at Boulder
>216 UCB
>Boulder, CO 80309
>phone: 303-492-3619
>fax: 303-492-1149

Cheers,

Tom Yoksas
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