How to best utilize these machines ?

[Hillmann]

Hi - F@H Forum !

I have thought about starting for a while now, have tried to install and run for a period - unfourtently not with big success



I recently got my hands on 10 PC's with the following specs:
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Intel Celeron - 3,06Ghz - EM64T Capable - System bus speed 533 Mhz
Intel Desktop Board - D915GAG
2 x 512MB Ram DDR1 CL2.5 PC-3200 - System memory speed 400 Mhz
Seagate Barracuda 40GB - ATA - 7.200 RPM
Floppy, DVD, PSU etc.
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I also got one server grade PC which has following specs:
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Intel Xeon - 3,00 Ghz - FSB 800 Mhz - HT Enabled
Intel Server Board - C49813-604
2 x 512MB Ram 333Mhz CL2.5
Hitachi Deskstar 164GB - SATA - 7.200 RPM
One extra NIC ethernet Card
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Besides all this a have a DELL PowerEdge Server 2900 running Ubuntu which I'm using for game servers and web servers. The server has the following specs:
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2 x Xeon Quad - 2,00 Ghz - E5335 Bus Speed 1333 Mhz
2 x 2GB and 2 x 4GB - Total 12GB DDR2 FB-DIMM - ECC - 667 Mhz
6 x 73GB - SAS - 15.000 RPM - HOT SWAP
RAID CARD for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10,
2 x NIC's Onboard
2 x PSU How Swap
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If i could install F@H in a way that doesn't effect the performance of the other services i use, then could this machine also be used to fold some proteins.


My question is now how to utilize these machines in the best possible way for F@H

Which OS should i be using ? How to setup the client and stuff ?

Could it be in a cluster fashion ?
I would prefer if it could be easy to start, stop and monitor from a single machine rather than using KVM stuff...


I'm anxious to hear you answers !


Best Regards
Lucas

[Adak]

You can't do anything worth the electricity with the celerons.

The other two can fold SMP work units, just fine. I have an 2 X L5420 Xeons server, same RAM. It folds SMP, but it's 15% slower than 1 X i7 940 @ 3.5GHz, even though it's folding 100% of the time.

FAH essentially IS a cluster. To mimic that in your own (tight) cluster, you'd need very expensive interconnects, so that's completely unfeasible. You could set up a "work group" of rigs, but there's no advantage as far as folding ppd, and the FAH servers will probably choke on what you would feed them from the "director" of the group.

Welcome to the glory and the curse of FAH - older and perfectly working rigs, really ARE obsolete for the project, because of the cost of the power needed to run them.

The V7 client will control several other rigs, and provide basic monitoring and stats. The HFM monitoring program is really preferred for the monitoring (not the controlling), however. Share the FAH (the folding) folder and add SAMBA and you're good to go. Ubuntu does this just by right clicking on the folder and selecting it, and filling in some check boxes and clicking OK. Beautiful thing to see.

[7im]

Hi Lucas, welcome.

If you pay for the electricity, sell/scrap/donate the celerons and try to raise some funds for build a few newer systems with multiple core chips like an i7. What it would cost to run those 10 celerons for 3 months would pay for a new system that would earn almost as many points. Save your pennies and buy newer.

If you don't pay for the electricity, fire them up and run a CPU client on each one. But still save your pennies for i7 upgrades. We want your folding to be as energy efficient as possible, eventually.