Hi there,
I'm new to this forum, so hello
I'm looking to build up a render farm for my company, and have been doing quite a bit of research. We have a really big job that may be coming up, and have to boost up our infrastructure to handle this.
I initially contacted people like BOXX, Workstations Specialists, IBM and so on. After much back and forth between all these guys, IBM seemed the way to go on the cost front and available support.
The requirements we worked out are:
Dual socket Xeon E5520 2.26 Ghz/1066 Mhz FSB/8 MB L2
Server board with dual socket support for the 5500s
12 GB DDR3 1333 Mhz RAM
80 GB SAS or SATA drive
We will be needing 40 of these machines, as we have built the hardware taking our software licences into consideration.
The only problem is how expensive the hardware is, we will be building up the farm in multiples of 5 as our software plan allows.
Quote from IBM on a 42U rack (with 2 x Power Distribution Units with power cords, 1 x console switch and 1 x 1U monitor and keyboard), BladeCenter-E chassis (14 blades), 5 HS22 blade servers of the above spec, DS3200 storage controller with 6 x 1 TB SATA drives, 1 x TS2900 tape autoloader, 1 x LT04 SAS tape drive, 10 x LT04 tape cartridges came to USD 73,878.31, which is like good god. That's on 5 dual socket blades, and our end requirements are on 40 dual socket blades.
Does this sound reasonable? I mean, the hardware is fantastic no doubt, and 3 year support included. It's certainly not a bad deal, at least compared to BOXX etc.
Still the costs are quite steep. On the quote we received, it hasn't been broken down, so have requested that the quote be broken down so I can see the cost implications on scaling up.
So I've gone back to my orignial research on building up our own rack, which will no doubt be much more cost effective, but a nightmare to maintain. I was hoping someone could help me out on this front. I have come across the following articles:
http://helmer.sfe.se/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/server-part-1,775.html
http://blog.deadlycomputer.com/2006/09/17/458/
I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty building one of these. The cost savings will be well worth it. I have done research on hardware, and the 1U/2U servers that Intel offers look great, but I'm pretty sure they won't be cheap either. So I'm looking into building a custom rack that will hold all the components without any chassis, basically the components will just be resting on an aliminium support (think ATX case support) that can be slid in and out of the rack. We can get our hardware at cost, which is a good thing as well.
If we go the above route we won't be packing the machines very densely in order to try keep them as cool as possible.
On cooling, will be putting the rack in a closed off area with air con. Thinking of building a AC controller linked to a thermostat to save power.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
I'm new to this forum, so hello
I'm looking to build up a render farm for my company, and have been doing quite a bit of research. We have a really big job that may be coming up, and have to boost up our infrastructure to handle this.
I initially contacted people like BOXX, Workstations Specialists, IBM and so on. After much back and forth between all these guys, IBM seemed the way to go on the cost front and available support.
The requirements we worked out are:
Dual socket Xeon E5520 2.26 Ghz/1066 Mhz FSB/8 MB L2
Server board with dual socket support for the 5500s
12 GB DDR3 1333 Mhz RAM
80 GB SAS or SATA drive
We will be needing 40 of these machines, as we have built the hardware taking our software licences into consideration.
The only problem is how expensive the hardware is, we will be building up the farm in multiples of 5 as our software plan allows.
Quote from IBM on a 42U rack (with 2 x Power Distribution Units with power cords, 1 x console switch and 1 x 1U monitor and keyboard), BladeCenter-E chassis (14 blades), 5 HS22 blade servers of the above spec, DS3200 storage controller with 6 x 1 TB SATA drives, 1 x TS2900 tape autoloader, 1 x LT04 SAS tape drive, 10 x LT04 tape cartridges came to USD 73,878.31, which is like good god. That's on 5 dual socket blades, and our end requirements are on 40 dual socket blades.
Does this sound reasonable? I mean, the hardware is fantastic no doubt, and 3 year support included. It's certainly not a bad deal, at least compared to BOXX etc.
Still the costs are quite steep. On the quote we received, it hasn't been broken down, so have requested that the quote be broken down so I can see the cost implications on scaling up.
So I've gone back to my orignial research on building up our own rack, which will no doubt be much more cost effective, but a nightmare to maintain. I was hoping someone could help me out on this front. I have come across the following articles:
http://helmer.sfe.se/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/server-part-1,775.html
http://blog.deadlycomputer.com/2006/09/17/458/
I'm not afraid of getting my hands dirty building one of these. The cost savings will be well worth it. I have done research on hardware, and the 1U/2U servers that Intel offers look great, but I'm pretty sure they won't be cheap either. So I'm looking into building a custom rack that will hold all the components without any chassis, basically the components will just be resting on an aliminium support (think ATX case support) that can be slid in and out of the rack. We can get our hardware at cost, which is a good thing as well.
If we go the above route we won't be packing the machines very densely in order to try keep them as cool as possible.
On cooling, will be putting the rack in a closed off area with air con. Thinking of building a AC controller linked to a thermostat to save power.
Any suggestions?
Thanks!