Spending plan for the Research and Teaching unit for financial years 2011/12, 2012/13 and 2013/14 under two funding scenarios where the entire computing budget for the next three financial years is either 100k/50k/100k or 100k/0k/100k.
This spending plan assumes that a virtualisation service (KVM) will continue to be provided (sufficiently resourced and funded) outside of the Unit. The unit is already extensively virtualised, physical servers that exist are there purely because of particular performance requirements.
Host (Virtual/Host) |
Usage |
2011/12 (100k) |
2012/13 (50k) |
2013/14 (100k) |
Action |
Spec |
Priority |
£Estimate |
Action |
Spec |
Priority |
£Estimate |
Action |
Spec |
Priority |
£Estimate |
cake |
Theon (Database/In/Out Server) |
REPLACE: age >3yrs; out of warranty; slower than current desktops |
three local physical disks, large memory |
High |
2500 |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
burly |
Teaching PostgreSQL Database |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
REPLACE: age >3yrs; out of warranty; disk I/O |
RAID Disk, 8GB |
Medium |
1500; recoup some cost from Teaching Budget; use hand-me-down |
castle (VBox/seavixen) |
Webots License |
TO BE REPLACED BY unknown (KVM/unknown) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
cracker |
Research PostgreSQL Database |
REPLACE: age >4yrs; out of warranty; would subsume 'puffin' (public facing), increased use |
RAID Disk, 8GB |
Low |
1500; use hand-me-down |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
cracker |
Webmark |
TO BE REPLACED BY unknown1 (VBox/wasserboxer) (with ProjectsDB ) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
elephant (VBox/seavixen) |
Matlab Research FlexLM Licensing |
TO BE REPLACED BY unknown (KVM/unknown) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
embankment (VMWare) |
Theon - Portal |
TO BE REPLACED BY stonebridge (VBox/wasserboxer) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
epping (VMWare/metropolitan) |
Maple FlexLM & TFTP & Openconf |
TO BE REPLACED BY unknown (KVM/unknown) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
fondant |
Theon - UI |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
greenford (VBox/scimitar) |
School DB Login & ProjectsDB |
TO BE REPLACED BY unknown1 (VBox/wasserboxer) (with Webmark) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
hatchend (VMWare/metropolitan) |
IGS/ITO/ISS RT |
TO BE REPLACED BY unknown2 (VBox/wasserboxer) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
heffalump |
64Bit Large Memory Compute |
DEPENDS ON COMPUTE PLAN |
DEPENDS ON COMPUTE PLAN |
DEPENDS ON COMPUTE PLAN |
maida (VMWare/central) |
ICSA SIMICS FlexLM Licensing |
TO BE REPLACED BY unknown (KVM/unknown) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
mysore (VMWare/metropolitan) |
Tracks not-a-service |
TO BE REPLACED BY unknown (KVM/unknown) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
puffin |
Demos/Tomcat |
DECOMMISSION (REPLACED BY cracker) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
redbridge (VMWare/wasserboxer) |
Theon - Basecamp (SVN+Trac) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
ruislip (VMWare/central) |
Maple14/Matlab FlexLM Licensing |
TO BE REPLACED BY unknown (KVM/unknown) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
scimitar |
VirtualBox Hosting |
DECOMMISSION: age >7yrs, power hungry |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
seavixen |
VirtualBox Hosting |
DECOMMISSION: age >7yrs, power hungry |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
snaresbrook (VBox/scimitar) |
Web Services |
TO BE REPLACED BY unknown (KVM/unknown) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
victor |
Coltex |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
REPLACE: age >3yrs; out of warranty; disk I/O |
RAID Disk |
|
1500 |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
wasserboxer |
VirtualBox (or KVM) Hosting |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NEW |
DR/Live Mirror for 'cake' |
CREATE unknown (KVM/unknown) |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
Host |
Usage |
2011/12 (100k) |
2012/13 (0k) |
2013/14 (100k) |
Action |
Spec |
Priority |
£Estimate |
Action |
Spec |
Priority |
£Estimate |
Action |
Spec |
Priority |
£Estimate |
* |
* |
AS ABOVE |
AS ABOVE |
AS ABOVE |
victor |
Coltex |
NO ACTION PLANNED |
NO ACTION: run out of warranty for a year, fallback to hand me down or desktop as necessary |
|
|
|
REPLACE: age >3yrs; out of warranty; disk I/O |
RAID Disk |
|
1500 |
Planned spending total is effectively so low that there is not any significant difference between the two scenarios.
We will need to add a bit of star-gazing into the above as this just assumes ongoing continuance of all existing services.
In 2012 the compute nodes will be 5 and 6 years old, at some point they will start to fail and we will have to replace them or bin the cluster. The cluster continues to be used for gridengine jobs which for various reasons can't be done on eddie the same compute nodes are part of the hadoop cluster which is used by a number of researchers and the Extreme computing course.
I do not believe the clusters in their current form are sustainable, assuming we wish to keep this functionality I believe we should:
with a view to retaining about the same number of cores on a reduced number of nodes.
We are currently looking at ways to cut the power useage of the cluster (