See our general page on upgrading clusters for current list of considerations regarding upgrading Matrix.
Note: Order must be $5K or larger to to pay "overhead". Therefore, buy all parts, especially some ones, all at once.
Where should users' data be located?
Where should application data be located?
Where is "temp" (not backed up) data located?
Given: OS on fast, solid state drive (SSD) on head node.
Where
NOTE: Must finalize quantity (and final, final specs) after all other decisions are made and priced.
4/14/14. Czarek: It looks like the slowest cpu E5-2620v2 2.1GHz has the best price performance ratio but anyway I would not buy the slowest cpu. Right now in Gdansk we are buying 10 servers and we decided to go for 10-core cpus E5-2670v2 2.5Ghz (20 cores per node). As in matrix in Gdansk we have only slow interconnect between nodes and some programs can run efficiently only on single node so more cores per node gives for such program advantage. Other programs both in Gdansk and on matrix just need the highest possible total performance and exchange very little data between nodes so than number of cores is not important. What about space restriction ? Is it better to buy smaller number of faster nodes ?
NOTE: Not awaiting major decision, only slight shifts in costs as other decisions are made. We welcome questions or concerns, of course.
Refer to the "Scheraga - Cluster Backup Choices" page, created following the Fall 2013 Matrix failure.