Today is day two of the new cluster install.
66 blades with dual core dual proc Opterons
4 racks of 16 500 GB SATA drives
Infiniband for nas
more network cables than you should be allowed to shake a stick towards and every last foot of them run under the floor
Yeah it’s a huge project. And the next one comes in Thursday’s week. For those doing the math the total processing power available to the cluster is minus 4 blades for each rack for cluster masters and NAS/NFS masters thereby totaling around 232 processors with about 32 TB directly attached to the cluster. Not to mention the other team dropping in 100 TB which we do for every cluster and about once again every two or three clusters.
It’s been years since I ran cable for more than a connection or two and even longer since I ran anything under the floor. Of course we have a nice setup with tracks under the floor for cables, nice KVMs, high dollar switches, massive power redundancy. It’s pretty much top of the line for everything period and that is nice to work with. Of course if my crackberry keeps jumping off my belt and into the open tiles I will be getting a replacement very soon. It turns out that is the most common cause of the Unix support group’s crackberries dying. It’s sad that we will just have time to clean up from this install in time to receive the next shipment…
Work is still interesting. I didn’t manage to quit smoking but I only had 6 all day at work and two of those were at lunch. I am pretty stoked about that to be honest. I barely felt irritable at all. If I can keep that amount up for a couple of weeks I think I can actually quit. It is more impressive than it sounds. I am working ten hours a day right now with another hour for lunch because I don’t get paid for Thurs and Fri du to being a contractor. That wil change soon as well.
My second week is crazy busy but I seem to be fitting in well and I still like my job and my co-workers. I can’t honestly think of one thing to complain about save my sore body which is sore in places I had forgotten could be sore. I am looking forward to bed and waking up which is not something I am used to. I get comfortable in this job.