I now own too much computing power

So at work, I've been decommissioning a data center. As we were clearing out the last of the cabinets I ended up with TWO HP DL980s, each with 8, 10 core processors (80 cores total each box) and 1.5 Terabytes of RAM. Yep... I've got 160 cores and 3 terabytes of Ram in two gigantic servers sitting in my garage... That's not all... I also have a Sun/Fujitsu SAN with almost 100 TB of SATA storage and fiber channel connectivity back to the DL980s. This is on top of the HP DL 580 that is already running (4, 10 core processors and 512Mg Ram) and 4 mac minis....

I'd love to do something with the 980s, but short of selling them, I'm at a loss. It's not like I can legally run OS X on them, but -wow- wouldn't that make the world's fastest Indigo box! Realistically I'll have trouble even powering them up as they each have 8 power supplies. Any creative and fun suggestions????

On a side note, it's positively sickening what I scrapped in that DC. Equipment that I dreamed of owning in previous companies was simply tossed into the scrap heap. The technology hoarder in me saved enough that I can no longer park in the garage, but it still made me sad...

Terry

That would make one hell of a SecuritySpy server.

But you might brown out the neighborhood when you turn it on! And empty your wallet on electricity costs.

Hmmmm... how about a VM server? Run OS X in a VM instance?

Ha! I'll definitely have to run a temporary sub-panel just to power them up. I am thinking about booting one up as a Hackintosh, just to see if OS X will even recognize 80 cores and that much RAM. I've done it on lesser HP servers, but never one with this much horsepower. I suspect I'll have problems with video though. The video chipset in these servers isn't very good, and finding a card thats compatible with OS X drivers, and will fit in the server may be a deal breaker. I could do it as a VM, of course, but that seems too easy LOL.

The 580 runs oVirt (KVM/libvert/Linux) and does quite well.

Terry

I would absolutely run some version of VMWare ESX or open source alternative and partition that thing up like crazy... SO much fun to be had, but I agree - what *exactly* does one do with that? I was totally happy when I scored two old Dell servers from work and you score that class of stuff? Since it sounds like you can't quite fit it all, I'll "reluctantly" take it off hands. And by reluctantly I mean that my truck and I will be there in a few hours - 'bama ain't all that far away!

goodness me.. that must be worth a small fortune!!

Perhaps donate it to Matt & Jay to speed up the relflector service/use it to store the huge wishlist!

I would absolutely run some version of VMWare ESX or open source alternative and partition that thing up like crazy... SO much fun to be had, but I agree - what *exactly* does one do with that? I was totally happy when I scored two old Dell servers from work and you score that class of stuff? Since it sounds like you can't quite fit it all, I'll "reluctantly" take it off hands. And by reluctantly I mean that my truck and I will be there in a few hours - 'bama ain't all that far away!

I'd love to run VMware, but the free version limits you to 2 physical processors still, so that'd be 6 that were unused LOL. We use Redhat's enterprise virt engine at work, which is the commercial version of KVM and oVirt and it runs at near native speeds. We switched from the 980s to all Cisco UCS gear when I built our new data center so we had cabinets of 980s sitting idle for almost a year. We scrapped many, sold a few and gave some away. The two I grabbed from the shredder were the last ones. Seems there isn't a market for massive-power-in-one-box anymore. You should have seen the Oracle ExaData "Appliance" that was tossed. I would have loved to have that, but it required special power cables and we were contractually obligated to destroy it... Shameful...

I'm thinking I'll just try to sell them, the DL580 I'm currently running is already way more power than l'lI really ever need; but if I can't, I'll shoot you a PM with my address! Maybe we can setup a Louisiana/Alabama-based Indigo Cloud!!!

Terry

goodness me.. that must be worth a small fortune!!

Perhaps donate it to Matt & Jay to speed up the relflector service/use it to store the huge wishlist!

If I could donate one to Matt and Jay, maybe they could sell it and buy fuel for the company jet, so they could go on the European tour Jay wants so badly! Only after V7 is released, of course!!

Terry

Unfortunately, selling it is likely your best option - if nothing else to save your air conditioner; my two old Dells tax the cooling in my office zone during the summer with the entire South's A/C capacity isn't enough to begin with! I can't imagine nearly tripling the PSU's and keeping the temperature anywhere near approaching reasonable. Plus the noise...

I wish I had the money to spring for one of those APC racks that have the A/C and all built-in.

I'd rather they kept it and made reflector faster.. :p

[jay (support)]

I'd rather they kept it and made reflector faster.. :p

Horsepower isn't the problem unfortunately - the transatlantic round trip is since our data servers are in the US. Yet another non-trivial thing to address after I7 ships...

Horsepower isn't the problem unfortunately - the transatlantic round trip is since our data servers are in the US. Yet another non-trivial thing to address after I7 ships...

AWS for the win? It sounds to me like you may have to step up to a 64-bit number to continue indexing your feature/request list...

I'm thinking I'll just try to sell them, the DL580 I'm currently running is already way more power than l'lI really ever need;

:: fast forward 10 years ::

"How did [insert software name here] ever run on such under-powered hardware?? My watch has more power than that now!"

I'd rather they kept it and made reflector faster.. :p

Horsepower isn't the problem unfortunately - the transatlantic round trip is since our data servers are in the US. Yet another non-trivial thing to address after I7 ships...

Yeah I figured. But I'm just going to do my best Jeremy Clarkson impression... MORE POOOOOWWWWEEEEERRRRR.

[jay (support)]

AWS for the win?

If only it was that simple.

Any creative and fun suggestions????

You say it's in your garage? Thought about setting up a neural net to run your self hosted copy of Pied Piper?