[Wrf-users] Help! computing experts

[michael bane]

>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:34:13 -0500
> From: Xingang Fan <xingang.fan at wku.edu>
> Subject: [Wrf-users] Help! computing experts
> To: wrf-users at ucar.edu
> Message-ID: <4BA13CC5.1000806 at wku.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Hi,
>
> Is there anybody out there who has experience of putting together a
> small HPC cluster to run WRF model? I would appreciate it very much if
> you could give any suggestions.
>
> GOAL: I got an empty room and some funding (12-15K), and hope to have
> WRF modeling results from there. So, what computing hardware and
> software should I put into that room?
>
> I have seen that DELL has different PowerEdges, but have no ideas  
> about
> which one is the most appropriate one for our tasks.  I hope to have  
> at
> least 32 cpus, some disk space (~10TB). But to configure a small HPC
> computer out of those DELL options seems too hard for me. Please share
> your experience and help me out!
>
> -- Xingang Fan, Ph.D.
>
> Assistant Professor
> Dept. Geography & Geology
> Western Kentucky University
> 1906 College Heights Blvd, #31066
> Bowling Green, KY 42101-1066
> Phone: (270)745-5980
> Email: xingang.fan at wku.edu

I've not noticed any other replies but I'd suggest you seriously  
consider investing in a rack and fast interconnects (InfiniBand,  
gigabit Ethernet), then populate the rack with various compute and  
disk nodes as you can afford (of course don't forget suitable air con  
too). This will give you some h/w upgradability and the interconnects  
will help with the parallel performance. It partly depends on what  
size model you want to run - if it's a small domain and fits on 24  
core then a single machine with 2 sockets of Magny Core chips would  
suffice...

I'd seriously consider the disk side too if you're doing a few runs...  
or have somewhere to move the many GBytes of data off to

M
--

Dr. Michael K Bane
Senior Development Officer
RESEARCH COMPUTING SERVICES
Univ. of Manchester M13 9PL
http://www.rcs.manchester.ac.uk
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