25th of April

Farm status
CPU only
Running Rosetta work

Nvidia GPUs
Running Rosetta (CPU) overnight and Einstein (GPU) in the mornings

Raspberry Pis
Running Rosetta and Einstein 24/7

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Other news
I installed one of the WD SN850 SSD's into the Ampere Altra. I've got it on the shelving unit where most of the Intel machines were sitting. I've powered it up. Its very loud for a 2U machine. While I managed to get it to boot off a USB thumb drive it wouldn't install Debian Buster. I've downloaded the Debian Bullseye image and will try that next. I have also downloaded an Ubuntu server image that I can try. Due to the noise I can't run it when other people are around.

The other two WD SN850's were installed into the Ryzen 5900X machines (one each) and I did a clean install of the operating system and BOINC on them.


Graphics cards
I am keeping an eye on my usual computer hardware shops to try and get RTX 3060 Ti cards. I've been looking for months now. One shop has RTX 3060 (non-Ti) but they want more money for them than the Ti version. They won't take orders unless they have stock and they never seem to have stock on the Ti versions.

Hopefully with Etherium changing to Proof of Stake soon and Nvidia throttling Etherium mining on their cards that should mean the crypominers lose interest, or they will switch to some other flavor of bitcoin. I won't buy off eBay or similar sites as you don't get a warranty and I don't want to support scalping.

10th of April

Farm status
CPU only
Running Rosetta overnight

Nvidia GPUs
Two running Einstein (GPU) and Rosetta overnight (CPU)

Raspberry Pis
Running Einstein and Rosetta

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Bye Bye Intel
The Intel GPU machines have been sold. They were 6 x Intel Core i7-8700 with 32GB of memory. That leaves room on the wire shelving units for the ARM server and moving the 2nd storage server.

I spent the day removing network and power cables from behind and beneath the shelving units. I removed a 16 port switch from the network and the cabling for the Pis has been consolidated to another 16 port switch. I used a lot of zip ties to bundle the network cabling together once the redundant ones had been extricated.

I now need to get another 10GbE switch so I can run the ARM and 2nd storage servers. They both have 10GbE NICs and while I have a couple of free ports on the current switch its on the other side of the room, so I have to run cables and there will be few devices on that shelving unit all wanting 10GbE connectivity.

27th of March

Farm status
CPU only
Off

Intel GPUs
Off

Nvidia GPUs
Off

Raspberry Pis
Pi3's running Einstein. Pi4's running Einstein and Rosetta.

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Other news
I bought three WD SN850 NVMe SSD's in the 1TB size. Two will go into the CPU only machines (replacing the Sabrent Rocket 4 SSD's) and one is for the Ampere Altra.

The Ampere Altra arrived. I have yet to unbox it. Its a 2U rack mount and weights around 20Kg so its not exactly small or light. I have yet to work out where to put it. I don't have a rack so it will probably end up on a shelving unit. As mentioned above I have an SSD to use as a boot drive and I have downloaded the ARM64 version of Debian and written that to a USB thumb drive, so hopefully it will be a simple process to install it even though there is no standard for booting ARM64 devices (unlike PC's).

11th of March

Farm status
CPU only
Running Rosetta overnight.

Intel GPUs
Off.

Nvidia GPUs
Two doing bursts of Rosetta (CPU) and Einstein (GPU) work.

Raspberry Pis
Pi3's running Einstein. Pi4's running Einstein and Rosetta.

For news on the Raspberry Pis see Marks Rpi Cluster


Other news
The 2.5GbE switch arrived and is now plugged in. I put my two spare 2.5GbE NIC's into the Nvidia GPU machines.

I ordered (and received the following day) more patch cables as I use color coded ones. White for the 2.5GbE cabling to make it easier to work out which port they need to go in.

My order for more NIC's via eBay got cancelled/refunded. Apparently they were returned to the seller as undeliverable due to the mailing label getting damaged.

I made another order for different NIC's via Amazon which cost more but they are based upon an Intel i225 chip. The eBay ones are based on a Realtek chip. When they arrive I will swap some of the NIC's around.

After all this Einstein fixed their scheduler so that it doesn't keep issuing new data files. Apparently it was misconfigured which is why the large downloads. Its back to smaller downloads and I probably didn't need to upgrade the network.