offering a Folding Server and connetivity to accept clients

[nictech]

Hi @ all

we are a ISP Located in Europe we would like to know what is needed to build a server or more and provide also connectivity.
Is there some where a tutorial or a requirements page?

[Joe_H]

The basic requirements are high speed connectivity, minimum of 8 GB RAM on a Debian system with access to 50-100 Tb of fast SSD storage.

I will bring your offer to the attention of one of the F@h team, they should get in contact with you.

[nictech]

Hi thx for the reply
we have plenty of hardware and we can provision internet connectivity that should be the easy part!
we will wait for the contact!

[HaloJones]

Linus Tech Tips did a video on building a server for FAH. Worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaMjPs66cTs

[nictech]

we need no how to from LLT thats nice to watch.
as we understand we need to get in touch with the folding stuff. they actually load there sw on the machine that we will provide.

[PantherX]

Welcome to the F@H Forum nictech,

FYI, there's a Developer Fireside Chat hosted by the F@H Team which you might consider joining: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=34136

[CovertJam]

Jumping on this topic;
I'm an Infrastructure Engineer in the UK with some idle resource. What's the minimum Internet bandwidth required for hosting a work Server?
I see Linus suggested 1Gb/s. Is this a definitive figure? Would 30/40Mbps be no use?
While I appreciate the importance of this connectivity, I know you're struggling for Server availability so thought it worth an ask to see if we can do our bit to help.

[Jorgeminator]

40 Mbps won't cut it, sorry.

[PantherX]

...I see Linus suggested 1Gb/s. Is this a definitive figure? Would 30/40Mbps be no use?
While I appreciate the importance of this connectivity, I know you're struggling for Server availability so thought it worth an ask to see if we can do our bit to help.

Welcome to the F@H Forum CovertJam,

Thanks for your offer. Since the recommended bandwidth is 1 Gb/s to 10 Gb/s (that's the range), it won't help out for hosting a Work Server. Currently, they are in the process of setting up more Work Servers. The issue is the existing infrastructure is hitting bandwidth bottleneck and connection bottlenecks on the physical servers (multiple 10Gb/s ports fully saturated). While things have improved, there is additional work in the pipelines to ensure we meed the current demand.

[CovertJam]

I see. Well I hope all goes according to plan!
I've been given the Amber light (don't cause me any problems and you can do what you want) by my TL to play with around 56 idle Xeon cores, so I will get started on making them sweat a little for F@H. (●'◡'●)

[PantherX]

...I've been given the Amber light (don't cause me any problems and you can do what you want) by my TL to play with around 56 idle Xeon cores, so I will get started on making them sweat a little for F@H. (●'◡'●)

That's fantastic! I do know that there are WUs available for 24 CPUs and few for 64 CPUs. However, you can always break-down the CPUs into smaller values like; 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16 as these are safe numbers, i.e. the WUs will not encounter a domain decomposition error (the WU can't be successfully divided across the available CPUs for folding).

[Neil-B]

I run my 56 Xeon cores as a 24core and 32core slot … you shouldn't have problems keeping them as client-type advanced … what CPUs are you running?

[CovertJam]

That's fantastic! I do know that there are WUs available for 24 CPUs and few for 64 CPUs. However, you can always break-down the CPUs into smaller values like; 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16 as these are safe numbers, i.e. the WUs will not encounter a domain decomposition error (the WU can't be successfully divided across the available CPUs for folding).

Ah, I have a total of 56 cores to play with but they are spread accross 4x VMWare ESXI hosts.
I was going to simply assign 14x vCPUs to a VM on each host. Would you recommend dividing into more VMs?

I run my 56 Xeon cores as a 24core and 32core slot … you shouldn't have problems keeping them as client-type advanced … what CPUs are you running?

They are Xeon Gold 6134 (8c 16t). Two in each of our 4x PowerEdge R640's. Disaster Recovery kit that lays dormant 24/7... touch wood.

[PantherX]

Fingers crossed, I hope your DR kit doesn't become your primary kit!

I would suggest that you have 1 CPU client on each host with 16 CPUs. That way, you get the maximum folding power. Do note that you can use a passkey for security and bonus points: https://foldingathome.org/support/faq/points/passkey/

[CovertJam]

Haha don't we all!

I'm not sure if we can stretch to 16 core VMs straight away. We wanted to play it safe as there are a handul of VMs that tick over on there. Including a Backup proxy.

However, you can always break-down the CPUs into smaller values like; 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16 as these are safe numbers, i.e. the WUs will not encounter a domain decomposition error (the WU can't be successfully divided across the available CPUs for folding).

-Do I take from this that in our configuration, 16 would be ideal but 12 is the next best? 14 runs risk of compute error?