Farm status
Intel GPUs
3 running Seti work. The rest are off.
Nvidia GPUs
All off
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Other news
I sold off one of the ASUS P6T's. The other one and a GTX670 are on eBay ending tomorrow. I also sold off some Seasonic power supplies. I have interest in the remaining motherboards and a couple of GTX750Ti cards. That still leaves a bunch of other parts and the two i7-5820K system to sell off.
I had a phone company technician come out to install a second ADSL line. Unfortunately he didn't have a key to the communications cupboard. Its meant to be a standard set for phone companies but it seems they don't come prepared.
I'll put up a few more graphics cards on eBay next week to get rid of them.
I've ordered a new Drobo 5N2 to replace my Drobo 5N with. I need to order some larger WD Red drives to go in it so it can backup the storage server. Once its up and running I will sell off the 5N.
08 April 2017
02 April 2017
2nd of April
Farm Status
Intel GPUs
All except one currently running Seti work. They were running Asteroids work before.
Nvidia GPUs
All off.
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Farm news
I've changed all except one of the Intel GPUs over to Linux. That's 7 of them. The last one had an SSD + HDD which I had to swap out with the proxy servers SSHD. Its now the same configuration as all the other Intel GPU machines and currently installing Linux. I had to rebuild the proxy server.
I found that installing Beignet (Intels OpenCL drivers for Linux) doesn't work if you are on the 3.16 kernel. It will install but clinfo is unable to detect the device. Updating the kernel to a 4.x one seems to have resolved that. I can now use the iGPU but it slows down the CPU so is not normally worth the effort.
For the moment I am leaving the Nvidia GPU machines running Windows but plan on selling off the two GTX970's and also the two 6 core/12 thread machines which currently have GTX1060's. I'm going to keep the GTX1060's but will need to put something else in there in order to sell them. I will need to investigate running the GPUs under Linux and what driver combinations work.
The computer shop rang regarding the storage server. They have received it from their supplier but it seems to only have SAS expanders for each row of drive bays. Its got 12 drive bays but each set of 3 has its own cabling. The hard disk controller has only a single SAS connector meaning it can only run 3 drives. I'll have to chase them up next week. It seems the shop don't have experience with storage servers.
Intel GPUs
All except one currently running Seti work. They were running Asteroids work before.
Nvidia GPUs
All off.
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Farm news
I've changed all except one of the Intel GPUs over to Linux. That's 7 of them. The last one had an SSD + HDD which I had to swap out with the proxy servers SSHD. Its now the same configuration as all the other Intel GPU machines and currently installing Linux. I had to rebuild the proxy server.
I found that installing Beignet (Intels OpenCL drivers for Linux) doesn't work if you are on the 3.16 kernel. It will install but clinfo is unable to detect the device. Updating the kernel to a 4.x one seems to have resolved that. I can now use the iGPU but it slows down the CPU so is not normally worth the effort.
For the moment I am leaving the Nvidia GPU machines running Windows but plan on selling off the two GTX970's and also the two 6 core/12 thread machines which currently have GTX1060's. I'm going to keep the GTX1060's but will need to put something else in there in order to sell them. I will need to investigate running the GPUs under Linux and what driver combinations work.
The computer shop rang regarding the storage server. They have received it from their supplier but it seems to only have SAS expanders for each row of drive bays. Its got 12 drive bays but each set of 3 has its own cabling. The hard disk controller has only a single SAS connector meaning it can only run 3 drives. I'll have to chase them up next week. It seems the shop don't have experience with storage servers.
19 March 2017
19th of March
Farm Status
Intel GPUs
All off at the moment. They have been running overnight.
Nvidia GPUs
All off at the moment. The two GTX1060's were run overnight.
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Linux testing
I did some more testing with Linux giving various VM's a workout. I have a Debian Jessie VM, a Debian Stretch VM and a Mint VM. I'm in a position to switch the Intel GPUs over to Linux without too much drama. About the only problem I see is each machine will get a new identity and lose its history of work done.
It seems Microsoft has started giving messages about unsupported CPU's on earlier versions of Windows with the latest CPU's which includes the AMD Ryzen. That means all new equipment I buy will probably be running Linux. Not the smartest idea from Redmond. It will be interesting to see how much market share they lose.
Storage Server
It is still on its way. I have already picked up a bunch of new 4TB hard disk drives to go in it. I have also ordered a 10Gbit network card to put in it. That means I'll have to get a couple of switches that support 10Gbit before I can make use of it. I am thinking of a 1Gbit switch with a 10Gbit uplink for most of the crunchers and a 10Gbit main switch. All my machines (apart from the Raspberry Pis and the AlphaServer) have 1Gbit network ports, some have two.
I need to make some room for the new server. I'm expecting to get rid of a number of CM Storm Sniper cases. Two of them still have ASUS P6T's and Corsair H80 water cooling in them, the other parts have been cannibalised. The other two are empty.
After that I need to sell off the existing i7-5820K's (I have two) before I can order some AMD Ryzen's to replace them with. Then there are all the old graphics cards that I need to get rid of...
Intel GPUs
All off at the moment. They have been running overnight.
Nvidia GPUs
All off at the moment. The two GTX1060's were run overnight.
Raspberry Pis
All running Einstein BRP4 work
Linux testing
I did some more testing with Linux giving various VM's a workout. I have a Debian Jessie VM, a Debian Stretch VM and a Mint VM. I'm in a position to switch the Intel GPUs over to Linux without too much drama. About the only problem I see is each machine will get a new identity and lose its history of work done.
It seems Microsoft has started giving messages about unsupported CPU's on earlier versions of Windows with the latest CPU's which includes the AMD Ryzen. That means all new equipment I buy will probably be running Linux. Not the smartest idea from Redmond. It will be interesting to see how much market share they lose.
Storage Server
It is still on its way. I have already picked up a bunch of new 4TB hard disk drives to go in it. I have also ordered a 10Gbit network card to put in it. That means I'll have to get a couple of switches that support 10Gbit before I can make use of it. I am thinking of a 1Gbit switch with a 10Gbit uplink for most of the crunchers and a 10Gbit main switch. All my machines (apart from the Raspberry Pis and the AlphaServer) have 1Gbit network ports, some have two.
I need to make some room for the new server. I'm expecting to get rid of a number of CM Storm Sniper cases. Two of them still have ASUS P6T's and Corsair H80 water cooling in them, the other parts have been cannibalised. The other two are empty.
After that I need to sell off the existing i7-5820K's (I have two) before I can order some AMD Ryzen's to replace them with. Then there are all the old graphics cards that I need to get rid of...
07 March 2017
7th of March
Farm Status
Intel GPUs
All except one running Seti work
Nvidia GPUs
Ran all of last weekend. Currently off.
Raspberry Pis
All except two running Einsten BRP4 work
Linux testing
In my hunt to find alternatives to Windows I have been installing various Linux flavours on a couple of machines. My current leaning is towards Debian. I'd like to get an up to date kernel and they have an up-coming release called Stretch. When exactly it will be available is a guess, but maybe April 2017. Why do I need the later kernel, well those AMD Ryzen machines need an up to date kernel to correctly run tasks on them.
I spent a lot of time last weekend and again this weekend installing and re-installing to find out that either upgrading to Stretch or installing via the Stretch net-install (RC2) doesn't work and you lose the desktop.
At the moment I've setup a virtual machine and I'm on the 2nd reinstall of Debian after it decided to remove my entire desktop due to doing apt-get remove gstreamer* and apt-get autoremove commands.
I did have a play with Mint 18.1 (Serena) which is visually great however I don't want a full-blown desktop system just to run on the number crunchers and possibly storage servers. A light-weight desktop is enough for my needs. I can even work with no desktop and use the command-line if needed.
Storage server
I have ordered a bunch of 4TB hard disks and a 2U 12 bay storage server. Its taken almost 2 weeks of back and forth with the shop to get it configured the way I want.
I currently have a Windows-based file server with a RAID controller and 4 x 4TB hard disks and while it works fine expanding its capacity is rather difficult. As it turns out the one I am buying uses the same motherboard as my existing file server, so I may just rebuild it later into the same configuration and use it to backup the new one.
Ryzen woes
After the PC Case Gear payment portal decided it didn't like me being behind a corporate firewall I haven't placed my order. That turned out to be a good thing because there are a couple of major issues with them.
First the motherboard people are having to correct issues with their BIOS so most motherboards are hard to find at the moment.
Second the windows task scheduler doesn't understand they are hyper-threaded chips and so it moves tasks around more than it should effecting performance. That will probably require Microsoft to provide an update. How long and which versions of windows it will be available for is unknown. Linux (if you have an up to date kernel) doesn't have this issue.
Once these issues are ironed out I think they'll provided a great replacement for my 6 core/12 thread machines and I will place my order. I need to sell off my old hardware to make room for the new stuff.
Intel GPUs
All except one running Seti work
Nvidia GPUs
Ran all of last weekend. Currently off.
Raspberry Pis
All except two running Einsten BRP4 work
Linux testing
In my hunt to find alternatives to Windows I have been installing various Linux flavours on a couple of machines. My current leaning is towards Debian. I'd like to get an up to date kernel and they have an up-coming release called Stretch. When exactly it will be available is a guess, but maybe April 2017. Why do I need the later kernel, well those AMD Ryzen machines need an up to date kernel to correctly run tasks on them.
I spent a lot of time last weekend and again this weekend installing and re-installing to find out that either upgrading to Stretch or installing via the Stretch net-install (RC2) doesn't work and you lose the desktop.
At the moment I've setup a virtual machine and I'm on the 2nd reinstall of Debian after it decided to remove my entire desktop due to doing apt-get remove gstreamer* and apt-get autoremove commands.
I did have a play with Mint 18.1 (Serena) which is visually great however I don't want a full-blown desktop system just to run on the number crunchers and possibly storage servers. A light-weight desktop is enough for my needs. I can even work with no desktop and use the command-line if needed.
Storage server
I have ordered a bunch of 4TB hard disks and a 2U 12 bay storage server. Its taken almost 2 weeks of back and forth with the shop to get it configured the way I want.
I currently have a Windows-based file server with a RAID controller and 4 x 4TB hard disks and while it works fine expanding its capacity is rather difficult. As it turns out the one I am buying uses the same motherboard as my existing file server, so I may just rebuild it later into the same configuration and use it to backup the new one.
Ryzen woes
After the PC Case Gear payment portal decided it didn't like me being behind a corporate firewall I haven't placed my order. That turned out to be a good thing because there are a couple of major issues with them.
First the motherboard people are having to correct issues with their BIOS so most motherboards are hard to find at the moment.
Second the windows task scheduler doesn't understand they are hyper-threaded chips and so it moves tasks around more than it should effecting performance. That will probably require Microsoft to provide an update. How long and which versions of windows it will be available for is unknown. Linux (if you have an up to date kernel) doesn't have this issue.
Once these issues are ironed out I think they'll provided a great replacement for my 6 core/12 thread machines and I will place my order. I need to sell off my old hardware to make room for the new stuff.
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