Monitoring RAIDs on s5nXX
We're monitoring their utilization at least. The actual
RAID status monitoring will happen really soon now.
Disks for the g7nXX Systems
We recently inherited 27 dual 3.0 GHz Xeon compute servers (which were already housed in our machine room.) In order to increase our storage space for our CMS Tier-2 storage facility, we're going to install a bunch of disks in them.
Yesterday I asked for quotes for qty 55 750 GB Seagate 7200.10 disks, but then on vendor said they've seen a 80% failure rate with that drive. So now we're looking at buying 55 500 GB Seagate drives--the NL35.2 model--which has a better MTBF. Oh, well, only another 13.5 TB instead of 20.
500 GB ATA Disks for the g8nXX Systems
Will installed them. I configured them. Together we added another 6 TB of disk space
More dCache Storage
We ordered 12 Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ATA100 500 GB hard drives today. They'll go into the g8nXX compute nodes and add another ~6 TB of disk space to our dCache pool.
CMS dCache Utilization
I added graphs of dCache disk space utilization today...
http://noc.hep.wisc.edu/nrg/dcache/Dcache-util.cgi
...using the data from...
http://cms-dcache.hep.wisc.edu:2288/usageInfo
172 More CPUs
UW-HEP just added 43 dual/dual (four CPU) 1.8 GHz Opteron systems to GLOW. They have host names in form "g9nXX.hep.wisc.edu". About 10 minutes or so after their inception, they were all 100% CPU busy--pounced on by Condor jobs from Comp Sci. That brings the total (right now) to exactly 1100 CPUs! Oh, and I almost completely forgot: they each have two 500 GB disk drives, so we also added 42 TB of storage space for dCache!
Ninth Generation Compute Nodes Arrived
We received 46 "dual/dual" Opteron 1U pizzaboxes today. Each one has four 1.8 GHz Opteron CPUs, 4 GB of memory and an extra pair of 500 GB disks that'll be used for dCache. So all told, that's 184 CPUs and about 45 TB of storage that'll almost fit into one rack.
Xserve RAID Command Line Tools 1.2
The 1.2 version of the Xserve RAID Command Line Tools package supports Apple Xserve RAIDs running the version 1.5 firmware. Changes from version 1.1 to version 1.2...
- fixes for the v1.5 firmware
- xserve-raid-info - reports about degraded
You can download the Xserve RAID Command Line Tools package here.
Problems with Latest Apple Xserve RAID Firmware
Some kind person informed me that my Xserve RAID Command Line Tools do not work with the latest firmware (that comes with RAID Admin 1.5, I think.) The fix was simple, but I haven't upgraded our Xraids yet, so I haven't released a new version.
Patriotic Duty
You wanna hear something kinda wierd? Some guy from the Apple recently asked me to review some proposals they're making to "various federal agencies - in particular, Dept of Homeland Security". I'm flattered, of course, but I'm also shocked that Apple doesn't have the expertise in-hourse. So the wierd part is: I said I'd help out and then they never replied back.
