Month: June 2009

Amusing programming construct that I am using for sanity checking

Start out from a known state … my $dryrun = false; my $debug = false; my $sanity = false; Heh … Maybe I should create a function with a probability distribution (a fuzzy function) named “is_in_doubt()” so I can write my $sanity = &is_in_doubt(); (and yes, this is Perl … I just can’t bring myself … Read moreAmusing programming construct that I am using for sanity checking

Good conversation with NVidia

They are getting backlog serviced as fast as they can. Looks like they are clearing it out pretty quickly. This is good.
Customers had been asking us about the reason for the delay. We speculated numerous possibilities. Most (all?) of them (my speculations) were wrong. That is good as well.
I am thinking now that the problem is macroeconomic, not microeconomic. That is, its the entire ecosystem, not one company. Everyone gets walloped in a recession.

Read moreGood conversation with NVidia

Cloud storage and HPC cloud PR is out

Released this morning
Automated High Performance Computing Solutions Provide Alternative to Shared
Virtual Private Server Clouds
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.–(Business Wire)–
NewServers Inc., the leading provider of Hardware as a Service (HaaS) dedicated
cloud servers, today announced a strategic partnership with high performance
computing (HPC) provider Scalable Informatics that will provide cloud storage
solutions capable of supporting HPC.

Read moreCloud storage and HPC cloud PR is out

Lots of updates, all good

All for the day job:
First, our help system is now online. This allows us to provide an externally visible issue tracking and project management/tracking site for customers.
Not just for our hardware. Scalable Informatics has been helping people support other peoples hardware for quite a while. Some of our biggest/best customers have not bought a single bit of hardware from us, but pay us to help them support, run, install, manage, …. their systems.

Read moreLots of updates, all good

Freedom from bricking

This is one of several memes customers are noting to us. They are worried, what happens if vendor X goes away, can I still get support/fixes/replacement parts for my gear? In the case of some of our competitors, the answer is a resounding and unqualified NO. In our case, our high performance JackRabbit systems, our … Read moreFreedom from bricking

One bit of looking happened upon something else … which resonates with todays economic climate

I was looking up one of my favorite (silly) phrases after a long hard day getting mvsas to work correctly on a Pegasus workstation running Fedora. I won’t let this devolve into a Fedora bashing session, though Fedora does need it.
That is what triggered this look though. I kept slogging at a number of Fedora misfeatures, until my efforts were rewarded. This resonated, and reminded me of one of my favorite (silly) phrases …
… The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Working with Fedora provides insight into this phrase.
Ok. So I googled it, and out popped the Wikipedia entry. Linked under this was the real topic of this post. The parable of the broken window fallacy.
This is where the context gets interesting. But before that, I replaced the Fedora kernel with our kernel build. Had to. Fedora was blowing core every chance it got. Ours? Not so much. That and mvsas wouldn’t work from Fedora, I had to pull the svn tree down.

Read moreOne bit of looking happened upon something else … which resonates with todays economic climate

Does "Best Practices" really mean "this is how we want to do it so nah nah to you"?

I’ve noticed this, that when people talk about “best practices” in HPC, usually there is … well … a slant to their analysis. Put another way … can you get real unbiased information on “best practices” from a biased partisan, who might not have been exposed to alternative methods, and may have a financial interest … Read moreDoes "Best Practices" really mean "this is how we want to do it so nah nah to you"?

Sounds like Lustre is getting something of a bad rap

Coverage from ISC09 in Hamburg has GPFS (from IBM) doing well, and Lustre being … well … Lustre. From InsideHPC’s coverage in the sidebar … The latest from the ISC’09 Twitter stream. Follow insideHPC. * LSI: “Lustre does not handle very well things going bad!” Thank you Terascale for that very insightful Session! #ISC09 * … Read moreSounds like Lustre is getting something of a bad rap