Re: Advice on cluster hardware
PDU = power distribution units. they are generally controlled via a
serial console or via inet/ip and allow the turning on/off of a port.
intelligent PDUs and serial console terminals can also be replaced by
compute nodes which have IPMI enabled motherboards. you might of seen
IPMI styled devices on Sun workstations or Compaq servers which allow for
bios and console access of a computer even when they are turned off.
many motherboard manufactures, such as SuperMicro, are starting to support
this.
i'm happy to hear you mentioning backups as many people ignore them. the
type of backup solution you need is generally driven by the amount of data
and your backup window. i wouldn't waste your time/resources by backing
up compute nodes, only the cluster master and/or file server really needs
to be backed up. in order to decrease a given backup window many people
are starting to leverage disk based backups AND (not instead of) then
write these backups to tape. LTO-styled tape drives (or libraries) are
starting to become one of the more popular backup medias currently.
-mike
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On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Ross Boylan wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-12-03 at 19:36, Michael Hanulec wrote:
> ...
> > Manageability of the system must be considered. If possible try to budget
> > in a serial console terminal server and some intelligent PDUs as they will
> > save you time and headache when things break. A nice server deployment
> What are PDUs?
>
> Also, if folks have any advice on backup, we need to consider that too.
>
>
>
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