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CPAC acquired a new Beowulf cluster in winter 2004-2005 called Sauron. This is a 159 node cluster. Each node has two 2.0 GHz Opteron processors and 2GB of RAM. The nodes are connected using Gigabit ethernet. This machine is placed in our new Cluster room, which was built with enough capacity so Sauron could grow to 3 times it current size.
You can check the current status of the cluster here.
In addition, CPAC has a 4 processor machine with 32 GB of RAM called Palantiri. This machine shares disk space with Sauron, and is intended as a analysis engine for data produced on Sauron. Palantiri is in a third room, which is intended to be slowly developed into a analysis and visualization room for the CPAC.

MakoMako, the Beowulf cluster visible in this picture, consists of 132 1.4 GHz AMD Athlon dual processor nodes. The nodes are rack mounted into 7 separate housings, each containing 18-21 nodes. Each rack of nodes stands 7 feet tall and weighs several hundred pounds.

Visible is the center rack where the two HP ethernet switches are mounted. These switches act as the hub of the cluster and allow us to dual channel-bond connections between a ll the nodes. Also visible is an empty slot. The rack mounting system allows us to easily service nodes simply by pulling them out of the rack.

 
PressAcross the room from Mako stands Press, our other Beowulf cluster. Press consists of 64 650 MHz PIII dual processor nodes, and was built when CPAC first formed. Press continues as the primar y resource for graduate students running computer simulations at CPAC.
 
CablesThe 264 100 Mbs ethernet cables connecting the 132 nodes and the 6 Gigabit fiber optic cable s connecting the frontend and two fileservers all meet in the center rack at the switches. Each com puter in the system runs a connection to each node, allowing us to channel-bond (aka "trunk") across these high speed switches. This arrangement allows for extremely fast message passing and data tra nsfer between all components of the system.
MakoMako is controlled by a terminal, seen here. From this terminal, each of the nodes and file servers can be managed remotely. If direct terminal access to the nodes or the fileservers are need ed, a KVM switch is used to connect directly the to the computers, and are also controlled from this workspace. Also visible in this picture are the orange fiber optic cables that allow a dual channel-bonded connection from the frontend workstation to the cluster. The large gray machine behind the workstation is the air conditioning unit that cools keeps CPAC at a constant temperature and relative humidiity.
 
Racks
The back of the racks (right) are threaded with half a mile of ethernet and power cables. Each rack has color coded cabling to facilitate tracking the individual node connections. The cables run acr oss the top of the racks to the center racks where they connect to the switches.

The racks (left) are separated by about 6 inches from each other to allow for good airflow between the nodes. Visible in this picture are the perforated tiles in the floor. These allow the air cond itioner to blow air underneath the floor and up into the racks to facilitate cooling.

RaagasThese are our set of four workstations, known as the Raagas cluster, which is no longer used long since superceded by more powerful clusters.
   

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