Farm status
Intel GPUs
Six i7-8700's running Asteroids and Seti
Nvidia GPUs
Off
Raspberry Pis
12 running Einstein BRP4 work
Other news
I got a PC assembler out and have now got all six of the i7-8700's swapped in. The i7-6700's that I used before are now decommissioned. That brings the Intel GPU part of the farm up to 36 cores/72 threads. They're slower than the 6th generation but due to the increased core count still produce more work.
With the new machines I also had to install Linux which is easy enough to do when I follow my own step-by-step instructions. I then discovered a slight problem with the way I setup BOINC on them so had to reinstall it on the existing machines. I am now working around a quirk of the Asteroids project server giving some machines the SSE2 or SSE3 app which is slower than the AVX version.
The ECC memory for the file server arrived and has been put into it. There is no obvious benefit at the moment until I get it running Linux and ZFS. That is the next step for it. I may get a SSD to use as a cache drive. I did use one of the other machines and a couple of external USB drives to practice getting ZFS running. Things left to try before I convert it are setting up windows file shares using samba and getting the UPS recognised.
The new router/gateway device also showed up so that is something else for me to work on.
21 October 2018
13 October 2018
13th of October
Farm status
Intel GPUs
Two i7-8700’s running Seti
Three i7-6700’s running Asteroids and Seti
Nvidia GPUs
Two running GPUgrid and Seti
Raspberry Pis
Twelve running Einstein BRP4 work
Supermicro BIOS update
I haven’t updated the Supermicro BIOS since I got it. It came with a BIOS version 1 and they are up to version 3 now. I decided its about time it got updated due to all the Intel Spectre patching that is happening and download the latest from their website. The instructions say to put it on a DOS boot disk and run it. How to create a DOS boot disk in this day and age? I have a USB floppy drive and MS-DOS 6 upgrade diskettes, but even that doesn’t work.
After a lot of googling and coming up with suggestions that don’t work I ran across one that actually worked by using Rufus to create it. After that it was fairly straight forward apart from the couple of times when the machine rebooted and appeared to have died (it powers off), but leaving it to do its thing it got there. I expected a reboot after applying the BIOS but not two while booting up again.
Load balanced internet
After last weeks issues with the Telstra internet connection not working to US destinations but the other one did I had a bit of a look at load balancers. It seems they are usually combined with a network firewall appliance so I might get one of those. I don't think the firewall built into my current routers is particularly effective so it should also improve network security.
I need to get the Telstra internet connection changed back to ADSL and get another modem to get it going. Personally I would like to get rid of the home phone which would solve the problem of scam phone calls from overseas, but the wife wants to keep it. This would all change if/when the NBN comes around as there is no point in having two phone lines when NBN offer speeds up to 100Mbit on a single connection. They don't think they be doing my area until 2019.
File server changes
One of the other projects I have is to replace the file server, however I am looking at reusing the existing one running under some derivative of Linux in order to move away from Microsoft products. That was one of the reasons to update the BIOS. I plan on setting the RAID controller to JBOD mode and then using ZFS for its file system, however the server doesn’t have ECC memory which is recommended for ZFS file systems. It can take it but I didn’t buy it at the time due to cost.
Intel GPUs
Two i7-8700’s running Seti
Three i7-6700’s running Asteroids and Seti
Nvidia GPUs
Two running GPUgrid and Seti
Raspberry Pis
Twelve running Einstein BRP4 work
Supermicro BIOS update
I haven’t updated the Supermicro BIOS since I got it. It came with a BIOS version 1 and they are up to version 3 now. I decided its about time it got updated due to all the Intel Spectre patching that is happening and download the latest from their website. The instructions say to put it on a DOS boot disk and run it. How to create a DOS boot disk in this day and age? I have a USB floppy drive and MS-DOS 6 upgrade diskettes, but even that doesn’t work.
After a lot of googling and coming up with suggestions that don’t work I ran across one that actually worked by using Rufus to create it. After that it was fairly straight forward apart from the couple of times when the machine rebooted and appeared to have died (it powers off), but leaving it to do its thing it got there. I expected a reboot after applying the BIOS but not two while booting up again.
Load balanced internet
After last weeks issues with the Telstra internet connection not working to US destinations but the other one did I had a bit of a look at load balancers. It seems they are usually combined with a network firewall appliance so I might get one of those. I don't think the firewall built into my current routers is particularly effective so it should also improve network security.
I need to get the Telstra internet connection changed back to ADSL and get another modem to get it going. Personally I would like to get rid of the home phone which would solve the problem of scam phone calls from overseas, but the wife wants to keep it. This would all change if/when the NBN comes around as there is no point in having two phone lines when NBN offer speeds up to 100Mbit on a single connection. They don't think they be doing my area until 2019.
File server changes
One of the other projects I have is to replace the file server, however I am looking at reusing the existing one running under some derivative of Linux in order to move away from Microsoft products. That was one of the reasons to update the BIOS. I plan on setting the RAID controller to JBOD mode and then using ZFS for its file system, however the server doesn’t have ECC memory which is recommended for ZFS file systems. It can take it but I didn’t buy it at the time due to cost.
06 October 2018
6th of October
Farm status
Intel GPUs
Two i7-8700 running Seti
Three i7-6700 running Seti
Nvidia GPUs
Two running Seti, were doing GPUgrid
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Other news
Bloomberg reported on Supermicro computers being hardware hacked at the factory. If the reports turn out to be true then its a problem for me as I have two Supermicro machines as storage servers. Okay one is still in its box but I have been using the other one for a few years now.
Comms Issues
I had some communications issues with Telstra (one of the largest ISP’s in Australia). I have been unable to upload to or download from US sites for the last 3 days. European sites were unaffected. It seems there was a problem with the undersea cable connecting us to the rest of the world. The Raspberry Pis are on a separate internet link using a different ISP and they also were unaffected. I probably need a load balancer so I can share both internet connections and to provide failover capability. That will be another little project to do.
Intel GPUs
Two i7-8700 running Seti
Three i7-6700 running Seti
Nvidia GPUs
Two running Seti, were doing GPUgrid
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Other news
Bloomberg reported on Supermicro computers being hardware hacked at the factory. If the reports turn out to be true then its a problem for me as I have two Supermicro machines as storage servers. Okay one is still in its box but I have been using the other one for a few years now.
Comms Issues
I had some communications issues with Telstra (one of the largest ISP’s in Australia). I have been unable to upload to or download from US sites for the last 3 days. European sites were unaffected. It seems there was a problem with the undersea cable connecting us to the rest of the world. The Raspberry Pis are on a separate internet link using a different ISP and they also were unaffected. I probably need a load balancer so I can share both internet connections and to provide failover capability. That will be another little project to do.
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