[oclug] [OT] supercomputers

[Dana Webber]

On Sunday 16 November 2003 13:08, Jon Earle wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > The thing about clusters is that you start to *really* care about MTBF.
> > If you have a MTBF of 10 years and 2000 units, you're replacing a unit
> > every 2 days.  Clusters are great, but they're not a panacea.  You
> > also care about power consumption and aircon ;-)
>
> I suspect though, that the MTBF for PC units is lower, likely closer to
> 5yrs.  With 200 PCs in a cluster (still a large cluster), that comes to
> about 91 days between unit replacements.  (A 10yr MTBF would result in
> replacement of a unit every 6 months.)

Thats with room temperature and "standard" power supplies. Get a big A/C , and 
clean + reliable 115 AC and they should last a lot longer

-- 
Dana Webber
dana at dunrobin.dyn.dhs.org
http://dunrobin.dyn.dhs.org

Getting a computer system to work is like banging your head against a brick 
wall until the wall falls down.