Hefty Big Iron Sun Machines.

If any of you follow the CentOS list, you've seen this.

PARI has been donated several hefty big iron Sun boxes (to use Spot's term 
from last May).  We picked them up yesterday, and they are in line waiting 
inventory control checkin.  I will also be making arrangements in our server 
room for A/C and for power.  I now have available the following:

E6500 w/8 400MHz/8MB cache CPU's
E5500 w/6 400MHz/8MB cache CPU's
E6000 w/6 336MHz/4MB cache CPU's
2x E3500 (336 and 250MHz cpus, with 4 CPU's each)
E3000 w 6 250MHz CPU's
3x E450 w 2 400MHz CPU's (according to the handbook, these CPU's don't 
exist...501-5239 :-))

A box of what appears to be 400MHz/4MB cache CPU's, around 28-30 in the box, 
along with a pair of the special torque screwdrivers needed to change CPU's 
on the cards.

By cannibalizing the 5500 and the two 3500's, and by going to the 4MB cache 
400MHz CPU's, I can possibly do 24 CPU's in the 6500 (the Sun Enterprise 
EX500 CPU/RAM modules are all the same, the differences between models are 
number of slots and enclosure).  If the box of CPU's turns out to be mixed 
speed, I'd do 14 400MHz/8MB cache CPU's in either the 5500 or the 6500 case; 
while the 6500 can handle more cards, the 5500 can run the Gigaplane faster.

I haven't counted RAM yet, but the CPU boards are completely full in both the 
6500 and the 5500.  With up to 4GB per CPU card, 7 cards (2 CPU's per card) 
would work out to be up to 28GB, not a shabby amount of RAM.  But I haven't 
been through all the cards yet to take inventory of the RAM, so it could be 
less than 28GB of RAM.

The drives were stripped, but I also got several interesting rackmount Intel 
beasts with 4-6 18GB SCA drives each; maybe two dozen drives in all; the 
E6500 and E5500 both have a D1000 storedge array (I would take the D1000 out 
of the 5500 and put in the 6500, perhaps).  Would just need spud brackets (I 
have 20+ Ultra 30's that use those brackets....).  The E3500's have the 
standard FC-AL cages, and the E450's have their standard cages (SCSI).

What will possibly happen then would be the E3000 and/or the E6000 would get 
upgraded to the 400MHz CPU's and one or both put online too.

Updates will come once I figure out the RAM and how I am going to configure 
the 6500, which will be after they clear inventory control; it will probably 
be the first week in September at the earliest before I can test powerup the 
6500 or the 5500, since I have to get a 250V 30A socket installed (I 
currently have a pair of 120/208 three-phase 30A sockets under the floor, and 
will have one replaced with a L6-30 instead of one of the L21-30's that are 
there now; have several L5-30's, but have to have 200-240V, not 120V as on 
the L5-30).

Now, I mention the CentOS list for a reason.  There is a porting effort to put 
CentOS 4 (a from source rebuild of Red Hat's EL4) on SPARC.  Now, I have used 
Aurora for some time now; I also use CentOS 4 on Intel (and soon on Alpha).  
While I would like to continue to run Aurora on my production mail server 
(which will be moved over to something bigger, either one of the EX500's or 
one of the E450's), I am not at all averse to running CentOS on the beast.  

Now, my question to spot is simply this: if I provide the capability to build 
Aurora packages on, say, the E6500, what version does the box need to be 
running?  If it is running CentOS 4, will that present any technical problems 
to building Aurora packages?  (Since CentOS 4 has FC2 and FC3 in its 
heritage).  Further, I have offered the use of the beast to help build 
CentOS4 packages; any problem with that, spot?

On another technical note, for building packages, any thoughts on the 
difference in performance between 24 400MHz/4MB cache CPU's and 14 400MHz/8MB 
cache CPU's?
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu
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