Comments on: Another IKEA linux cluster

By: Woojay Jeon

Woojay Jeon — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 16:15:14 +0000

I was inspired by Tim's awesome work and tried building my own system, right here. Not as nice and neat as Tim's system with the customized drawer panels, but it is red! :)

By: Leonard Bernard

Leonard Bernard — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:45:23 +0000

uii, sehr interessant, wusste ich noch nicht!

By: Heimwerken

Heimwerken — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:00:11 +0000

Schreiber einer Rezession nicht verstehen, die behaupten er kann keine festen Schrauben loesen… also den, den ich habe kann das.
Erstes Einsatzgebiet nach dem Kauf war das abnehmen einer Unterkonstruktion einer Holzdecke. Hat voll durchgehalten und mir die Arbeit sehr erleichtert.

Andy

By: mbean

mbean — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 18:17:42 +0000

This cluster was designed with a specific task in mind. The use of hard drives on each node was because each node is processing a *large* chunk of data (cant be broken in to smaller chunks without massive headaches) and the network could not support the increase in load as the cluster scaled. We are not rendering. As far as Intel versus AMD, maybe the next Helmer will be Intel inside. The take-away message is that an IKEA Helmer fits the goods like a glove with minimal mods and doesn’t look like a rats-nest(see previous Helmer mod).

~guy that helped build it

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:55:23 +0000

I don’t get the use of hard disks on the nodes either, PXE/NFS boot works. Though it does add to the network load.

Several years ago I built a cluster with some surplus gear and it was very easy to saturate the network. I always wished I had a gig switch for it.

Another thing to not forget is power usage, it adds up fast and the “Boss” told me to shut it down after the first months power bill was $100 higher. :)

By: aoeu

aoeu — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:31:29 +0000

@pal
cheap dual socket botherboards don’t support quadcore processors.

By: pal

pal — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 05:43:32 +0000

Would this be faster than a commodore 64?

are there reasonable dual processor motherboards available, so you could get eight cores per unit?

By: andrew

andrew — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:53:27 +0000

ian: i agree, i went with intel quad core because it outperformed amd in all the benchmarks i could find. hopefully the amd choice was financially-based.

By: Ian

Ian — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 23:56:44 +0000

Looks really cool. I would have chosen Intel quad cores but thats just me. There is a vid on youtube where an AMD and an Intel Quad core race to render some video. Same specs except processors, and the Intel was much faster.

By: Edward Nardella

Edward Nardella — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 23:41:46 +0000

Why people keep putting in a hard drive for each node is something that baffles me.

Otherwise nice build. Off to look at the details.