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The individual nodes of the Beowulf consist of the following components:
The nodes contain no video cards, keyboards, floppy drives, CD-ROM drives or any other removable media. Instead, the TRENDnet NICs support a 28-pin Boot ROM as well as the Wake-On-LAN (WOL) feature.
Using WOL, we can switch on each machine remotely from one of the servers. Once on, Etherboot code in the Boot ROM is run by the BIOS. The startup sequence is described in Startup.
The two servers for the Beowulf cluster are based on the same hardware as the nodes (above) with the following additions:
Unlike the node machines, the servers boot from their own hard disks.
These systems were assembled and supplied by Cougar Computers in Canberra.
The Tux badges on each machine were supplied by ScotGold Products in Aberdeen, Scotland.
The interconnecting network consists mainly of six Hewlett Packard ProCurve 4000M 40-port switches, each with an additional 8-port 10/100Base-Tx module (for a total of 48 ports each).
Two of these switches are also equipped with a 1000Sx Gigabit Ethernet interface for "uplinking" to the servers via a Netgear GS504 4-port Gigabit Fibre Switch.
A total of 288 colour encoded RJ45 patch leads of varying lengths are used to connect the 3 NICs of each of the 96 node machines to the six 48-port switches. SC-SC multimode fibre patch leads are used to connect up the two Gigabit-equipped HP switches and the two servers to the 4-port Gigabit switch.
The Hewlett Packard switch gear was supplied by Diverse Data Communications in Canberra. The Netgear switch and data cabling was supplied by Cougar Computers in Canberra.
It is estimated that each node in the array could consume up to 150W for a 15kW total. Twelve 8-way power boards are used to distribute power to the nodes with 2 such boards in each of the six sections of shelving. At 240VAC, each power board will carry up to 5A (they are rated for 10A each). Each group of three power boards (corresponding to a group of 24 nodes) is then connected via three extension leads and GPOs to their own 20A circuits in the machine room. Three such circuits were available at the start of the project, a fourth was added by ANU Facilities and Services.
Two other 6-way power boards are used to supply power to the network switches and the server machine.
The power boards were supplied by Cougar Computers, the extension leads were purchased from BBC Hardware in Braddon, A.C.T.
The shelving used is (generously) on loan from the ANU Library. Equivalent second-hand shelving could have been procured from the A.C.T. Ex-Government Furniture in Fyshwick.