SVC Clusters

The SMP cluster of three Compaq Proliant 7000's

The front of the three machines. Compare with the 14" monitor and standard keyboard sitting in front. These are not your typical desktop computers.

And the back of the computers. There are two redundant, hot-swappable power supplies (lower right), a pair of hot-swappable processor cooling fans (lower left), and a whole set of PCI slots (some hot-swappable, some not). There are little lights on the slots that have boards in them. The computers are directly connect to each other, there's no switch here! Each computer has a direct route to every other. This will hopefully speed things up a bit.

A little humor here. Each machine has a front-panel LCD display for system stats, etc. The "idle" message can be programmed. This is the message on the first of the machines.

And the second machine...

And the third. If these three computers get together I'll have to be very careful, eh? (Maybe I should have called them HAL-01 through HAL-03...)

Cluster of PC's

The eight nodes, network switch, and terminal for the ``primary node.''

Between the two rows of nodes: all the wires.

The cluster from a distance.

A different view.

This is the cluster in its more "perminant" home. It's on the counter at the back of the physics library, aka the student study/tutoring room. I arranged the computers facing inward because there is more need to get to the back than the front. I rarely turn the cluster off or on and almost never need to access the floppy or CD drive. But I like to be able to see the status lights on the NIC's, have access to the network cable jacks, and easy access to the parallel port (for the cool blinky lights, see below).

And here's the cluster actually doing something. There's a set of 8 LED's connected to the parallel port of each computer. As the CPU activity increases, more of the LED's light up. The top-most LED blinks as a "heart-beat" indicator that the computer is still alive. Since the cluster was running nano-tube code when this photo was taken, the first computer (upper-left) is the server and is just waiting, only the heart-beat LED is on. The other seven are the clients and are working hard (all LED's on). Makes a rather spectacular display when you're standing in the room.

	The front of the three machines. Compare with the 14" monitor and standard keyboard sitting in front. These are not your typical desktop computers.
	And the back of the computers. There are two redundant, hot-swappable power supplies (lower right), a pair of hot-swappable processor cooling fans (lower left), and a whole set of PCI slots (some hot-swappable, some not). There are little lights on the slots that have boards in them. The computers are directly connect to each other, there's no switch here! Each computer has a direct route to every other. This will hopefully speed things up a bit.
	A little humor here. Each machine has a front-panel LCD display for system stats, etc. The "idle" message can be programmed. This is the message on the first of the machines.
	And the second machine...
	And the third. If these three computers get together I'll have to be very careful, eh? (Maybe I should have called them HAL-01 through HAL-03...)

	The eight nodes, network switch, and terminal for the ``primary node.''
	Between the two rows of nodes: all the wires.
	The cluster from a distance.
	A different view.
	This is the cluster in its more "perminant" home. It's on the counter at the back of the physics library, aka the student study/tutoring room. I arranged the computers facing inward because there is more need to get to the back than the front. I rarely turn the cluster off or on and almost never need to access the floppy or CD drive. But I like to be able to see the status lights on the NIC's, have access to the network cable jacks, and easy access to the parallel port (for the cool blinky lights, see below).
	And here's the cluster actually doing something. There's a set of 8 LED's connected to the parallel port of each computer. As the CPU activity increases, more of the LED's light up. The top-most LED blinks as a "heart-beat" indicator that the computer is still alive. Since the cluster was running nano-tube code when this photo was taken, the first computer (upper-left) is the server and is just waiting, only the heart-beat LED is on. The other seven are the clients and are working hard (all LED's on). Makes a rather spectacular display when you're standing in the room.